


the sun was in my eyes

by methdeatal



Series: high school is one helluva drug [1]
Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Highschool AU, Human AU, M/M, Modern AU, diary format oh god, high school lyfe, i dont know how american high schools work so this is all very ambiguous and vaguely european, literally the fic nobody asked for but i wrote it anyway, snufkin is kinda quirky doe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 49,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methdeatal/pseuds/methdeatal
Summary: Omg high school





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had fun writing this ok.. no laugh ok... i know i have like 2 other fics to update but i had a moment today aight  
> Also i set it in the 90s because im not writing about moomin having an instagram account

3rd May, 1999  
Monday

Today I made a friend. Mamma's happy. She says that she's proud of me.  
When he and I met, I was standing awkwardly a little too close to the yellow bus stop marker down our road. The grey pavement sort of slopes up and down along with the houses, so that they all look as if they're little cubes of butter melting on a stack of pancakes- only the hill is made of concrete and the houses are a mix of plastic blinds and the eyes that peek out from them.  
It was around seven or so in the morning. I rolled a bit of loose gravel under my shoe. Up and down, up and down. I was thinking vaguely about stupid things like school and the oddly shaped stain on the leg of my trousers where my hash-brown had fallen. I tried to wipe it with the back of my hand, but it didn't go anywhere.  
There were soft footsteps in the concrete, and there came a rustling of the hedges behind me. And when I glanced over my shoulder just for a second, I saw him sit right down on the little wall, just over in front of some old man's front garden. He didn't look back at me.  
Usually I would have just pretended I was staring at something else and I'd scratch my neck awkwardly, but something about what this guy was wearing just struck me as so odd. It was like a dress, this great green thing slung over his skinny shoulders and legs and there was a bunched sort of lace or something over the hem and collar. It was weird. I looked back at the road and continued to wait for the bus.

"Where do you live? I've seen you around."  
The boy was talking to me. I looked back over at him, properly. He leaned his two hands over the lichen in the wall and lounged back, staring back at me politely. His legs were swinging about so that his stripy trousers flowed this way and that. I shrugged.  
"Up the hill."

"Which house?"

"The blue one."

"Oh. You're new. You've got seashells in your front garden, right?" His hair was an interesting shade of orange, and through the light of the early sun it seemed to outline his whole head in gold. It was distracting.

"Yeah, I do. Where do you live?"

The boy shrugged back at me. "Around."

I remembered. "You don't live with all those redhead kids, do you?"

He raised his hand to his hair and smoothed it down, absently, and I think he was a little embarrassed. But it was kind of hard to tell. He had one of those blank faces that don't really show anything. "I do, actually. Funny you could tell. What's your name?"

"Moomintroll."

"What a strange name."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh yeah? And what's yours, John?"

"Snufkin." He smiled and dug his hands in his pockets. His teeth were fantastically crooked, all tied together in knots with elastic bands and metal wires and little red squares. I smiled back and showed him the silver line of my retainer.  
He didn't really say anything else to me after that. I stayed standing by the marker, and Snufkin stayed sitting on a stranger's wall- but I suppose that's where he always sat when he waited for the bus, just because of the way he calmly crossed his arms and dipped his left foot up and down, as if there wasn't anything wrong with the world.  
I went back to being nervous. The kind of nervous that makes your wrists go sweaty under your sleeves, and you have to wipe the top of your eyelids and pretend you're rubbing a bit of sleep out of your lashes. It was kind of stupid, because I knew I wasn't really remarkable enough to be singled out on a new day in a new school; but that's just the way my nerves were, and I was just going to have to toughen up. There's nothing wrong, I thought, wiping my eyelids again. It's going to be fine. At least you're not wearing a dress.

The bus creaked its way down the hill road exactly ten minutes later. It had the words "School Bus" plastered in glowing yellow dots all across the front panel. The doors pushed themselves inwards and the driver looked at me funny before I stepped inside and felt the floor give a little under my weight. Snufkin was standing behind me. I could tell by the sound of his weird Victorian boots.  
I slapped my bus pass on the yellow square the way Mamma had showed me last weekend, and the little green dot flashed a bit before I took it off and slipped it back into my pocket.  
There was the upper part of the bus and the lower part, where there was nobody. I chose the lower.  
I walked kind of stiffly down the aisle and pushed bits of crumpled tickets and half-full plastic soda bottles around before sitting in one of the dusty blue seats.  
Snufkin was still at the top of the bus, dropping shiny silver coins into the driver's palm. She shook it slightly so that they jangled around. He shrugged. She rolled her eyes very obviously and said something I couldn't hear, before handing him a little paper ticket and turning back to the wheel.

Snufkin trailed down the aisle and caught my eye before smiling again with his mouth closed and sitting down in the empty seat beside me. I smiled and moved my schoolbag. I thought the bus was going to leave, but it stopped just as it started to move and I saw a girl step inside, wearing a red duffel coat. She had the same colour hair as Snufkin. Her face was red, too.  
"That's my sister," he whispered, leaning in so that he could talk into my ear. He smelled nice, like raspberry soap and tobacco. "I hoped she was going to miss the bus."

"Why?" I said, watching her chest heave as she took her ticket and caught sight of us sitting together. He didn't answer. An ugly frown cast over her face and she walked over, her thick moon boots making a loud thumping noise over the rough plastic.  
She sat in the seat in front of her brother and turned around, saying something angrily in some foreign language. He said something back, calmly. She scoffed and turned back around.

"What are you guys saying?" I mouthed when he raised his eyebrows at me.

"She asked me why I didn't stop the bus for her," Snufkin mouthed back. He opened his satchel bag and pulled out something wrapped in tinfoil. It smelled good. "Sorry, we speak Swedish at home. You could probably tell by my accent."  
Snufkin unwrapped the tinfoil and pulled out a piece of lukewarm pancake. He popped it in his mouth and gave me a smile.  
I really liked his smile. I don't know why. I thought his braces were cute.

The bus journey wasn't as boring as I thought it was going to be. Snufkin noticed the dog-eared 200-page astrology book in my bag when I opened it to get my Nintendo, and looked very impressed when I told him a little shyly that I liked star-gazing. I thought he was going to make fun of me, but he didn't. He seemed far more interested in the book than the yellow console in my other hand.

"What's your star sign?"

"Gemini! What's yours?"

"Virgo. How long have you liked that sort of thing?" he said, sticking his fingers in through the crack in the bag zipper to stroke the old pages. I made a face.

"Not long. I just liked to look at the stars in our old house before I figured I might as well work on my identification. This is just one of my dad's old books."

"That's so cool. My dad's only interested in hockey games on the television," he replied, giving me an earnest look. There was a freckle on the very tip of his nose. "Funny you should only live just a few houses apart from me. We should go to the park in the evening when it's clear."

"Mom doesn't like you leaving the door wide open all night," said Snufkin's sister, sourly. She had been eavesdropping.

"Well, Mom wakes up if I close it and creates a big racket."

"Then don't sneak out."

"Then leave me alone and quit bothering me, Mymble."

She scoffed again, but I didn't see her face.

 

The new school was flat. There's no upstairs, only a wide building spread out over an average amount of space like tasteless butter substitute on a piece of stale bread. Kids poured out of the bus alongside us, and they didn't really seem to take any notice of me but they pushed Snufkin's shoulders roughly and they pulled on his skirt. But he didn't really care, I don't think. He just stuck a rollie into his mouth and rummaged around his many pockets for a lighter.  
Since school didn't start until half past eight, we sat together on the grass outside of the gates where kids were playing football like wild animals in the fields, and Snufkin eventually pulled out his zippo to show me. It was pretty beaten up. There was a drawing of a lady holding her hands over her breasts etched into the side.

"War-time," he said, giving me a grin with the rollie between his teeth. "The soldiers used to draw rude pictures on their lighters back in the day. It doesn't work, but it looks cool."  
He then put it back in his pocket and produced a second lighter, a strange see-through green one. I watched him flick the flame over the end of his cigarette and take a short hit. "What age are you?"

"Fifteen," I said, blinking. He turned right around and blew out a breath of grey smoke so that it didn't make me cough. "I thought so. I'm seventeen in September, but I missed a lot of school last year so I'm repeating a grade."

"Oh," I said. I wanted to ask why he had missed school, but I didn't. I wiped the hash-brown stain on my trousers instead. "I'm not very good at maths." I don't know why I said that. Snufkin smiled again.

"I'm not very good at anything," he said. "I don't read much."

"I kinda have to read... My dad's an author and my mom's a librarian."

"Ha! Isn't that convenient? My mom works at those stores where chemo ladies buy chest prosthetics. I don't remember what the English word for it is."

 

Snufkin and I were in the same grade, but not in the same class. It worked out as there only being around sixty students in the year combined, so we were all divided into three groups. I was in the second. Snufkin was in the third. He told me that all the intelligent kids were placed in the first, and so on. I didn't know how to feel about that. I felt bad for him because his locker had been trashed and written on in permanent marker. He didn't really keep anything in it anyway, but they filled it with disgusting stuff and he got yellow mustard on his sleeve.

Because I'm new and I'm joining the school just as the summer exams are coming up, I had to speak to this guy called Hodgekins. He had things like those silver marble desk toys in his office and a pair of dusty puppets on the shelf that I didn't want to think about. He sat with his legs crossed and he leaned in on his elbows, looking me full on in the eye while he spoke to me, which made me uncomfortable. But I guess he was nice. Hodgekins said that he and my father had spoken, and that it would all work out in my favour, and that all I had to do was stick my nose down and dig into the hard work. I stopped listening after a while and did the glazed-eye-nodding thing, but he said something about elbow grease and to keep my chin up before sending me off with a timetable and a pat on the back. I walked through the hall past his office and stared at the timetable, wondering how I was going to stick my nose down and keep my chin up at the same time.

I quickly realised throughout the first period that none of the teachers were in the mood to teach. They held their foreheads in their fingers and spoke monotonously, stumbling over a word here and there, wringing their hands nervously. I had little wet balls of paper shot at the back of my neck and I found some in my hair at the end of the second class, but I was left alone for the most part.

Until Physics.  
Physics was bad. It was a higher-level mixed class, meaning some students from the other classes came in and got a good look at me. The teacher didn't show up. Nobody went to get a sub. They crowded around each other's tables and clumped into little groups where they sat on their notebooks and they balanced pens on their noses. I don't really want to write down what happened but there's a bruise next to the small of my back and my stupid pens got so smashed up that the blue ink stained the lino floor.

I'm not saying I didn't expect to be at least mildly beaten up by the end of the day (I've got this awful wispy white-blond hair that looked cute when I was a kid and I'm over 250 pounds) but it still hurts a lot. The guy who did it said I looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy, which I guess makes me smile a little when I write it down now.

It didn't make Snufkin smile.  
He sat with me at lunch and stopped picking at his rainbow cookie. "He kicked you?"  
"Yeah, I didn't even do anything," I mumbled, staring down at the plastic box in my hands that Mamma had filled to bursting with sandwiches, peaches, oreos and ricecakes. "I don't know what his name was. He's blond, not as blond as I am."

"What was he wearing?"

"Like a red soccer jersey, shorts. Those weird surf necklaces."

"I know him," said Snufkin, darkly. "Billy. He doesn't like me either."

"Why? Why do you get pushed around so much? Did you do something?"

He shrugged. "I wear girls' clothes. My mom won't let me cut my hair too short. I'm dyslexic. I don't have any friends. Lots of reasons."

"You do have friends," I said. "Well- we can be. Friends, I mean." It sounded stupid and childish when I said it out loud, but something brilliant happened. It made me forget the pain in my back. Snufkin's face went a little red, and he smiled so that I could see the clear elastics stretch at both sides of his teeth.

"Yeah. We're friends, Moomintroll. You don't mind that I'm wearing a dress?"

"You don't mind that I'm fat?"

We both shook our heads, and I smiled with him.  
Besides that and a few other choice names, I was kind of left alone for the day. If you don't count the teachers. They were old and awkward, they smiled at me weird and gave me lots of paper and notes and strange looks from across the classroom. I bet they think I'm nerdy. I wonder what they think of Snufkin. I remember in my old school this guy called Sniff used to hang around with me, so all the teachers thought I was like him. I'm not nerdy, I'm just not anything else.

When the day finally ended I didn't see Snufkin anywhere. He wasn't in the hall or outside in the grass, so I just took the bus home by myself because I didn't want to go back into the building. The bus ride was a lot longer than it had been in the morning. I goofed around on my Nintendo until it started to annoy me and I shoved it back into my bag. My hand brushed against the astrology book and it makes me think of him again.  
I don't know. I thought of him when I walked home from the bus stop. I thought of him after dinner when I pulled out my homework. I thought of his red braces, and his Swedish accent, and the mustard stain on his sleeve, and the freckle on his nose, and his burning red hair over and over again that night when I lay in bed, watching the car headlights float slowly past over the ceiling of my bedroom through the blinds.  
I don't know why. I had to write all of this down, otherwise I think I'd probably explode. Sorry if my handwriting is messy.

\- Moomintroll


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely messages and the wonderful amount support i've gotten so far... this is like definitely the most fun ive had writing a fic so im well gonna continue it on ok here

6th May, 1999  
Thursday

So far what I have learned from my new school is that,  
1\. I don't like it.  
2\. The water fountains are busted.  
3\. My name is now Pillsbury.  
4\. There's been a dance and I missed it (thank god).  
5\. The exams are in three weeks.  
6\. We're going on a school trip to Sorrento just a week after that, in June. This has been a big thing that all the students have been talking about for months and months. I only found out about it on Tuesday.  
7\. Snufkin is my friend.

He woke me up at 4AM this morning. He threw a pebble at my window and it made me scream. I remember I hunched up for just a second, hoping I hadn't woken my parents, before climbing out of bed and stepping across the carpet. The summer is crazy because even at that hour my room was starting to lighten up a bit, and the sky was a weird sort of pseudo-orange when I poked my fingers through the blinds. I nearly screamed again when I saw Snufkin standing in my back garden down below the window.  
He waved at me and flashed a mini torch on-off-on-on-off. I wrenched open the stiff window as quietly as possible.

"What are you doing?" I whisper-shouted, poking my head out of the gap.

"Come down! Bring your book!"

I knew which book he was talking about. I tip-toed back over to my bed and I pulled a pair of thick socks on, as well as the grubby runners I keep beside the cabinet. My bag was leaning against the wall. I grabbed its string and pulled it over, yanking the zip open and taking out the paperback. As much as I was a little spooked by the pebble-stunt, I was really excited to finally sneak out of the house the way I had been daydreaming about ever since Monday. Snufkin's a good friend. He disappears now and then, and he didn't show up to school yesterday- but he's here now, and I'm not going to disappoint him! I decided to slide the book into my empty blue bag hanging on the doorknob, and I slung it over my shoulder before grabbing my jacket as an afterthought. It felt weird wearing a jacket over a shoulderbag but I was too distracted to really notice. I walked on the wooden bits past my parents' room at the sides of the landing, where there were no creaks. I slid down the banister the way I used to do as a kid and I landed gracefully on the tiles of the hall. My shoes squeaked. I walked a little slower.  
I grabbed the front door keys from the upturned seashell on the phone desk and stuck them into the lock, turning it this way and that until it clicked. The door opened invitingly, and in wafted the fresh air from the great outdoors that so pulled me outside. Closing the door behind me, I locked the house again and turned around. Snufkin hopped the fence and stood there beside the gates. He was wearing a green square cap, a jumper with a yellow spiral on the front, a grey jacket with a little fish motif swimming across the sleeve and these weird brown boots. They looked way too big on him. There was an ox-eye daisy safety-pinned to his hat. "Come on. You have the book?"

"Yep," I replied, straightening the bag strap. We walked together down the gravel and onto the pavement before he took hold of my pyjama sleeve. It made me stop. His grip weakened a little bit but I nodded and he smiled at me through the dark. Snufkin started to lead me down the hill, and past what I had learned as his house (the one with the red window-frames, and several bicycles abandoned in the yard). It was nice to stay passive and let him take me somewhere. I don't know why.

"There's the park just down here on the left," he said, sounding as if he knew where he was going. "The small one, you know. There's a tire swing in it."

"I've seen it," I said. "It's only the size of a swimming pool."

"Yes, but it's special. The trees still hold me after all these years. Can you climb trees?"

I gave him a look. "Not really, no."

We rounded the corner and walked past the rows of dormant houses. Snufkin's torch wasn't very good and it kept stuttering, but the salt streetlights did their jobs for the most part even if they sucked all the colour from the world. The light stained my sleeve a lovely yellow sludge colour.  
We came to a great oval of grass, all fenced off. I could see the tire swing from the gap in the green spokes.  
Snufkin let go of my hand and banged the torch to life again. "In there. We'll lie in the very middle and stare straight up at the sky. Nobody's gonna bother us at this hour."

"You do this often?" I wondered out loud.

He looked at me, mysteriously.  
"Often enough. Not always here. Never with anyone else."

I don't know why, but what he said made me feel sweaty behind my eyelids again. But this time it was good. I think I was embarrassed.  
Snufkin lead me through the gap in the fence. He fit through it easily, he could have snapped his bones like twigs if he wasn't careful enough. I got a bit stuck. I had to suck in my gut and duck my head. My hair got bits of cobwebs and crumbly tree debris in it.  
Snufkin kicked off his shoes and ran to the centre of the tiny park, where he threw himself down into the long grass and spread his limbs out like he was making a snow angel. I lay down next to him and did the same. Our hands and feet nearly touched, but they didn't.

"This is nice," I said.

"It is," he said.

The sky was clear as day. Night. Whatever! There were no clouds, none at all- and even with the streetlights, we could both see the massive expanse of stars pasted all across our peripherals. I felt that same urge I always felt, to reach up and try to touch.  
Instead, I picked up the book. "Throw me the light."

He shined the little torch at the page, so that it looked like there was a second silver moon in my palms as well as in the sky. I flicked through the yellow pages to the diagrams and peered back up. There were a few stars that lines up with a bunch of dots and lines on page 20. It looked kind of like a wheelbarrow.  
"There," I said, pointing at the sky. "The Plough. I know that one anyway, I think everyone does."

Snufkin craned his neck. "Where?"

"It's like a wheelbarrow. Or a shopping cart. Do you see it?"

"Kind of. The rectangle?"

"Yeah."

"It's, uh, a little part of Ursa Major. Here, come see the book." Snufkin rolled over in the grass, making a loud rustling noise. He held his head very close to mine, and I heard his breathing as I pointed at the second page and traced my finger over the black dots. "See there? The star at the very back is the bear's tail, and it dips into the spine. Those are the legs, and that's the bear's nose."

Snufkin made a vague noise. "Which bear?"

"Oh- back in like, the 1600s, some old hacks with telescopes looked at the night sky and they thought this constellation in particular kind of looked like one. Ugh, if I had a pen I'd show you."  
"Hang on." He dug in his pocket a moment before handing me a ballpoint. I took it gratefully and tried to hold the paperback against my knee so I had something to lean on. He watched me draw the outline of a bear over the dots.

"See," I said, tapping it with the pen. Under the torch I could see that the tip was covered in frosty bite marks. "A four-legged creature."

"You're good at drawing," said Snufkin.  
His voice was so suddenly quiet and weirdly soft, I started to burn up under the collar of my pyjamas. Why did he have to say it like that? It was weird. I shrugged it off.  
"I'm not, really. Right, so that's Ursa Major. And beside it is Ursa Minor, which is like a smaller upside-down version of the Plough."

Snufkin interrupted me with a gasp. I stared at him. He was looking up at the sky, eyes wide and wild. "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"A shooting star! I saw one! Look, Moomintroll!"

I peered up at the sky. All was still, until it wasn't. Something tiny, like the glare of a silver needle caught in the torch, shot through the stars faster than a wink. It made my heart thump against my ribs for some reason. "Oh, yeah! There must be a shower tonight!"

Snufkin wriggled around, keeping his eyes fixed. "Are they shooting stars or comets?"

"They're not stars, not really. Just floaty bits of rocks. Meteors."

"Shooting stars are far better names." There came another one, lower down this time. We both jumped in excitement, and Snufkin rolled forward so that he was sitting up. He sank his legs down into the grass and flowers, and I watched him stare for a while. He was smiling. I smiled too.

 

When I woke up again in my own bed, the morning was shining through my yellow curtains. They painted my room a lovely sunny colour. I felt like death.  
Mamma was knocking on my door, softer and louder and softer again.  
"Moomin, dear! Wake up now! You'll miss the bus!"  
"Coming," I mumbled. I pulled the flowery sheets over my head. The zipper on my jacket sleeve scratched against my cheek. I suddenly remembered the book of constellations and all that had come of it.

Mamma sat at the table when I came down the stairs, dressed. She sat between two bowls of porridge, and a tin of golden syrup. I stared blankly at the yellow lion on the tin's label before pulling out a chair and sitting. The kitchen smelled good.  
"Thanks."

Mamma nodded vaguely. She was reading something. A small book, with a boring off-yellow dustjacket. It read, "The Girl With a Pearl Earring", in swirly grey lettering. I quickly forgot about it and spooned some syrup into my porridge.

"Your lunch is on the phone-table," she said, twirling a glass bead from the string in her glasses between two fingers. "You should be at the bus stop by now. Did you go to sleep late?"

"No," I lied.

"Hmm." Mamma brushed an offending lock of wispy grey hair to the back of her neck with her free hand. "I don't believe you."

 

At the bus stop, there was a pebble in my shoe but I didn't want to bend down and take it off in the middle of the street. I waited again by the marker because Snufkin hadn't come yet. I wondered whether or not he was going to show up at all, but just as the bus was starting to rock up the road I caught sight of him jogging at a leisurely pace with his bag dragging across the pavement. He waved at me. I waved at him.  
"Hurry, the bus is behind you!"

Snufkin ran alongside the great rumbling vehicle and stopped beside me, yanking the satchel over his head. "Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

"Uh, yeah," I replied, stepping into the platform with my pass in my hand. He followed me inside and tipped his cap like a polite old man at the driver.  
He said, "Could you wait a minute? My sister's just down the path, she'll be here in a second."

The driver mumbled something impassively and we both went to sit down at our spots near the back of the bus. Somebody was sitting in the seats by the window, and he turned around to give us a sort of feral look. His eyes were big and black, and his hair looked like it hadn't been combed since Christmas.  
"Hey, Snufkin," he said, drumming his fingers on the back of his seat. His fingernails were cut so short that I had rub my hands together at the second-hand rawness.  
"Whomper," said Snufkin, blandly.

"You have the stuff I want?"

He rolled his eyes and sat down next to me. Mymble still wasn't there, so the driver closed the doors and we started to move.  
"Not on the bus, you moron. We're on camera." Snufkin pointed at the little black domes fixed to the fluorescant lights. "Oh." Whomper gave them a sour look and leaned back so that his head rocked against the windows. "After, then."

"Sometime. You have the essay I asked you?"

Whomper nodded. "As promised."

I watched them mutter to each other on either side of the seats, a little stumped. I didn't really have a clue what they were talking about, and it must have showed, because Snufkin raised his eyebrows at me and mouthed, "Ditch weed."

I stared at him. He stared back at me.

"Why're you always hanging out with Pillsbury nowadays?" said Whomper suddenly, peering back over the dusty velour. Snufkin gave him this great withering look. "Why? Are you jealous?"

"No," he replied, scratching the hair on his jaw. "It's just weird. New kid."

Nothing interesting happened for the first period of the day. Snufkin gave me a tightly-folded note at the end of break before leaving for his own classes, and I opened it at the beginning of History when nobody else was around. I sat in the middle of the classroom and folded my calves around the chair legs, smoothing out the lined paper over the crass drawings in the desk.

It read,  
"Don't be intimidated by what I do out of school. I have a lizard to feed and my mom thinks I need to make my own money independently.  
Family is out. If you want to skip the rest of the day and come to my house, meet me by the water fountain after whatever class you have now and we'll go together."

He didn't sign it off. I folded the note again and slipped it into my cardy pocket.

 

Snufkin was playing with the fountain button when I approached him fifty minutes later. Through the river of students milling about to whatever class they had next, he caught sight of me and tilted his head towards the back door exit at the end of the hall.  
"Be cool," he said, and started to walk against the crowd. "We'll go through the car park."

I followed him down the hall, through the door, past the dusty windows of the shop class backroom and through a few strategically placed flower beds until we reached the teacher's parking lot. All of their cars were new and sophisticated, red, grey, brown, burning metal in the summer sun. Snufkin lead me through the gravel and suddenly we were at the very back of the school, where they kept the massive garbage skips and a mouldy little shelter-type thing where the staff could huddle and smoke their lungs black.

"There's a gap in the gates," said Snufkin, stopping at the shelter to point at the metal fencing from across the grass where the thickets grew wild on the other side. "I can fit through it, but you might have to squeeze."

"Okay," I said. "What's with all these gaps in fences? Who's destroying all this property?"

"Not me," he replied, peeking over the shelter to glance at the windows in the building. "There's no teachers yet, but they'll come soon. We'll have to hurry out. Follow me."  
He scampered across the grass towards the fence, pushing apart a bunch of foliage. I hurried after him and looked nervously back at the windows while he pushed through the bent metal.  
I felt like a baby being unborn. Snufkin took my bag through the gap and beckoned me forward. I had to stick my head in first, then my shoulders, and then sort of maneuver sideways with my belly sucked in like an idiot. All the while the thickets scratched my skin and snagged on my cardigan, but still I pushed through and soon we were both on the other side.  
Snufkin pushed the leaves back over the gap and smiled at me. "Good job! Want to go to the newsagents before we go? I want another cookie."

The two of us hurried through the rows of quiet little houses on the other side of the school, where trikes and battered fairy-tents lay rotten in the residents' front gardens. I think some old lady in a rocking-chair saw us walking past, but she didn't say anything.  
At the end of the estate, there were roads and grass and little shops with their Christmas decorations still hung over their grimy nameplates. We went into the first one. Even during the day, the lights were all on inside and the air-conditioning was firmly switched off.  
The lady behind the counter regarded us suspiciously. "Day off school?"

"Hello, Emma," said Snufkin, peering at the magazine rack. There were filthy ones on sale just over the knitting and crochet booklets. "How's your niece?"

She clicked her tongue. "We're not speaking. She's decided to study Art History."

I walked awkwardly past the rows of canned rice puddings and baby food, thinking about different people and what they would buy at a shop like this. I wondered about Emma and who her niece was. Snufkin slipped a rainbow cookie into a paper bag and yanked a packet of Swedish Fish off the metal racks; and I picked a bottle of vanilla soda for me, a lemonade for him. We paid for our things with a lot of loose change, and left the shop.

Snufkin pulled open the plastic packet and shook it in front of me. "Take some."

"What are they?"

"Swedish Fish. Get it?"

"Ah. I get it." I took some. Surprise, they were shaped like fish. They did taste good even if they were a little chewy. I felt a little bad for Snufkin's orthodontist.  
Because there was no school bus that took us directly home, we just walked most of the way. The bus ride was never more than fifteen minutes, anyway, and we got to talk properly with each other without any teachers or classes or homework to come between us. There was still so much I didn't know.

"You have a lizard?" I said, watching him down almost half of the lemonade in one take. Snufkin wiped his mouth on the back of his woolly sleeve and smiled, just a little bit.

"Yeah. Doesn't have a name, but I call him a dragon 'cos he's a monitor. You know, don't they call monitors dragons in Asia or something?"

I grinned. "Komodo dragons! They're pretty metal. Biggest lizards on Earth. They've got anticoagulants in their teeth."

"What's that mean?"

"Blood-thinner," I said, conversationally. "They stop your blood clotting so you bleed out if you get bitten. I think they have venom, too, but I don't remember. I used to watch a lot of nature programming on the TV when I was little."

"Yeah, my dragon doesn't do that sort of thing," said Snufkin, through a mouthful of fish. "He just kind of sits under his light or burrows deep inside his terrarium. You can feed him today, if you want to. He eats worms and stuff."

 

Snufkin didn't just have a lizard. He had a black cat that sat outside of the red window-frames in his garden, and a huge tank in the hallway that housed two great, fat frogs.  
I was yet to meet them. The cat raised her tail in a friendly sort of way and meowed at us loudly when we swung the squeaky gate shut behind us. Snufkin walked up the pavement and bent to give her a back-scratch.  
"This is my dad's cat," he said, jingling the house-keys in front of her whiskers. "She doesn't have a name either. She's just The Cat."

"Hi," I said, stroking her gently over the head. I trailed my hand down her back, and she stood high on her toes as if it were the nicest feeling in the world. I knew how to pet her because my old friend Sniff had once owned a little grey cat who used to get fur all over my lap.  
Snufkin unlocked the empty house and let her in before leading us both into the hall. It was then that I saw the frog-tank.

"Frogs!" I exclaimed excitedly, leaning in to have a good look at them. Snufkin stuck his hand into the glass and touched one of them on their slimey backs.  
"That's Lily, and the other is Toby," he said happily. He dropped his bag onto the floor. "They're not mine. They belong to my siblings."

We went up to his room after sticking a frozen pizza in the oven. His kitchen was very crowded, full of baby pictures and plants and plastic letters on the fridge. The other parts of the house were crowded too- there were toys and books and shoes and laundry littered about the place almost everywhere, and I don't know what I was expecting Snufkin's room to be like but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be almost empty.  
His bedroom door was scribbled over in crayon. I didn't get a proper look at it because he opened the door and I was a little shocked to see just a bed, a tank, a window and a desk. The walls were green. There were no posters or books or anything at all.

Snufkin walked inside and beckoned me in. "This is my room. It's not very interesting."

I turned my head this way and that. "There's practically nothing in here."

"Yes there is; there's my lizard," he said, pointing at the big glass terarrium. It was full of sticks and earth and felt. He yanked the chair from his desk and went to open it up. I watched him stick his hand inside and pull out a small, spotty monitor.  
It blinked stupidly in the cool light of the room, and flicked out its tongue like a little snake.  
"Here he is. My man."

I squinted at him. "He's cute."

"He's not cute, he's a danger," said Snufkin, lifting the lizard up onto his head where it sat very comfortably in a nest of flyaway ginger hair. "Look at this. His balancing act is off the charts."  
We went to sit on the bed. There was something a little off about the mattress. I bounced up and down a bit before peeking under the sheets.  
"What have you got under here?"

"My clothes."

"Oh."

"And money."

I looked at him. "Tell me now and tell me honestly. Are you a drug dealer?"

"No," he replied, but he stared at the wall and stroked his dragon with his finger. "I just grow a bit of hash for myself and others who need it."

"Where?"

Snufkin waved his hand dismissively. "Here and there. I've harvested all of it already, don't worry."

I bit my lip. "What if you get caught?" I whispered, leaning in just a little bit. He looked at me and dropped his hand back down into his lap. We both wobbled a bit on the bed.  
"I won't," he said. "Not unless somebody snitches."

"I wouldn't do that," I said, quickly. "It's just a bit jarring."

"Why?"

"I guess I'm impressed."

"You're easily impressed, in that case."

"We've only known each other for four days," I said. "You don't know me that well."

He shrugged. "I know you well enough to make the fair observation that you're easily impressed. Everybody smokes. I'm assuming you don't."

I shook my head. "No. You're right."

"Would you like to?"

"Not really. I'm asthmatic."

"Oh."

The pizza was okay. When it was done and Snufkin pulled it out of the oven with a checkered teatowel, I dropped my half on the floor and all of the cheese came off. Which was annoying. So Snufkin gave me some of his and we ate it kind of awkwardly at his kitchen table.  
I watched him scratch his neck and look down at his plate. His eyelashes were red and see-through at the same time, and they flickered about whenever his eyes moved.  
I've been thinking about his eyes for some reason. I don't know. I just think about him a lot.

\- Moomintroll


	3. Chapter 3

12th May 1999  
Wednesday

I'm sitting in the garden. My back hurts. Ever since I've been to Snufkin's house, I've been thinking about my room and why there's so many things in it that I don't really use. And even before we moved, I remember trashing a lot of stuff I hadn't touched in years. There's my clothes and shoes and stuff, and I've got a shelf with a little rubbish-bin shaped pen holder, but on the other side there's my collection of plastic horses and my VHS tapes and a great menagerie of musty old toys stuffed inside the wardrobe. There's my mom's Paddington Bear with the freaky yellow eyes, a stripy stuffed cat called Mousey, a pink rabbit, a frog, a bear with a ribbon around his neck that sounded crinkly when you rubbed it between your fingers.  
I used to be way into that My Little Pony show when I was little, and I still own all the movies and stuff. I don't know why I haven't thrown them all out yet, it just feels wrong. I think Toy Story has brainwashed me just a little bit.  
I think I'm "sheltered". I'm not used to watching movies that aren't cartoons. When we were walking home from the bus stop on Monday, Snufkin ran inside his house and gave me one of his dad's tapes and told me to watch it. It was labelled 'Alice'. I asked him what it was, and he told me it was his favourite movie.  
I'm writing this all down because it was nightmarish. I was absolutely freaked out by the end of it. By the label I thought it was just going to be that Disney Alice in Wonderland film, but it turned out to be this horrifying half-live-action-half-stop-motion rendition of the story with skulls and googly eyes and china dolls. It wasn't even in English. I really wanted to switch the TV off, but I watched all of it because it was Snufkin's favourite movie. And Snufkin is my friend. I'm starting to think he may be a bad influence on me.

He asked about it yesterday.  
"Did you like it?"

We were sitting outside in the grass at lunch-break. I blinked at him and swallowed my Reese's. "It was terrifying."

"Yeah!" Snufkin lay back and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "Sorry there were no subtitles. It's Czech."

I wondered about that. "Is your dad Czech?"

"What?"

"You said it was your dad's."

"No, no, he's Finnish."

"Do you speak Finnish as well as Swedish?"

"Not really. My dad doesn't talk much. I suppose we should start working on our Italian."  
Snufkin sat up again and ran a hand through his hair, thoughtfully. He ground his cigarette into the grass. I just sat there in front of him and watched.  
"Are you going on the trip, then?"

"To Sorrento?" Snufkin nodded. "I can't wait. Don't you get tired of being in the same place for so long? It must be exciting for you, being in one place one moment and this the next." He gestured around the football field. "I just wish switching bodies was a real thing. So everyday I could wake up as a new person, and explore another house, another street. Are you going?"

I nodded vaguely. "Yeah. We got the forms and lists and stuff last week. It'll be my birthday while we're there, the 4th."

The plan was that all sixty of us would finish our exams, forget about them, meet at the airport at three in the morning and cram ourselves in on the journey. I don't know where I'm going to sit. I think it has to do with which place you are in the line. We'll be in Italy for four days: June 2nd to June 6th. Each day we'll go somewhere new, and it'll all be a great old joke together. We'll be like a big family. That's what our form teacher said. I don't believe her.  
Snufkin raised his eyebrows. "Your birthday! You'll be sixteen, right?"

"Yep."

"Any idea what you'd like?"

I looked at him. He was smiling. I shook my head. "No, no- I don't want anything. I don't need anything. Just the experience, I guess."

He seemed impressed by that. "I like how you think."

 

Anyway, today my whole year was called into the cafeteria and we were all given a little lined slip of paper. We were told to write down three students who we wanted to share a room with in the Italian hotel. I don't know how that's going to work out. I wrote down Snufkin, Toft and Whomper, because they seem to be the only kids who don't give us a hard time. Everybody else sticks gum in our hair and clothes, and they push Snufkin around like a ragdoll in the hallway. He doesn't seem to mind. Sometimes I wonder if he cares a little on the inside. It's really hard to tell.

He pushed up close to me on the bench and whispered, "Who did you write down?"

I showed him the paper. He showed me his. He wrote down Moomintroll, Toft and Teety-woo.  
"Who's Teety-woo?"

"You haven't met him," said Snufkin. "He's a decent fellow."

I don't know anybody other than Snufkin who says the word 'fellow'. It's endearing. I shrugged and crossed out Whomper's name.  
That's all really. Mamma wants me to read The Girl With a Pearl Earring. I said that I would. It's sitting upstairs in my room but I haven't opened it yet.

 

13th May 1999  
Thursday

I had my first music lesson today. Because of our excursion to Snufkin's house, I didn't have one last week. It was interesting.

It was one or those mixed choice subjects, like Physics and Art, so that meant some people from C were there. Including Snufkin. I used to have an ocarina a long time ago, but I don't know where it is anymore. It turns out that Snufkin plays a whole selection of instruments and he just didn't think to tell me yet.  
We sat down next to each other at the back, where there were a bunch of posters plastered across the wall with words like 'Allegro' and 'Crescendo' drawn in wobbly bubble writing. What I first noticed about the music room was that it was the tidiest out of every classroom in the school. There was a carpet instead of linoleum, no chewing gum under the desks, no dicks drawn anywhere in blue ballpoint and a great metal cabinet where everything like notes and sheet music and markers were stored. The whiteboard had a staff drawn on it very carefully, and there was a real piano by the fat computer.  
Snufkin smiled at me when he sat down and splayed his fingers over the battered desk. "First class together. Now I'll see if you're a nerd or not."

I don't know if he meant it in a mean way. I just looked at my lap and kicked my bag under the table. "I'm not. I don't play anything."

"You don't have to. Well. You might have to learn something on the recorder for the practical."

"Recorder?"

"You know, the English flute." Snufkin made a strange motion with his fingers under his mouth. "The plastic kind. It's really easy, don't worry."

"Do you play it?"

He shook his head. "No, I'll be playing a different sort. I'll show you."  
Snufkin scraped his chair out over the carpet and produced a long velvet string-bag from his coat pocket. He brushed the lint off his stripy skirt before placing it on the desk and pulling a thin little wooden flute from the inside. The holes were carved into flowers, and there were tiny leaves painted all across the body in red.  
"Here it is. It's a bit like a piccolo without the keys." Snufkin raised it to his mouth and blew. It was quiet and high-pitched.

"It's lovely."

"Thanks." He placed it back on the table. "I also play the harmonica, but I don't like to bring it to school because that would take out all the pleasure. I really wish I didn't have to take music as an academic subject, you know? If I want to play a tune, I'd rather it be for myself than for an examiner."

I nodded. "Yeah, you're right. You play not one, but two instruments? I'm impressed."

Snufkin stretched out his skinny arms just as a bunch of students started to crowd inside the classroom. "There's the accordion and the guitar as well. They're not really mine, though. Most of the instruments in my house belong to my dad and my grandfather."

"Your dad owns a lot of cool stuff."

He made a vague noise and pressed his tongue against the gap in his teeth. A boy came towards us and sat down next to Snufkin. His hair and skin were dark, and he had a great scabby cut over his forehead with those little paper stitches. He said, "So that's Pillsbury? How do you do?"

I blinked. "Hello."

The boy spread his books and pens all over the table so that they rolled onto Snufkin's part of the desk. I saw the label on one of his copybooks. 'Teety-woo', written in great sprawling black ink.  
He smiled at me and gave Snufkin a hearty pat on the shoulder. "This guy talks about you all the time, you know. Won't be long until the wedding, eh?"

I stared at him. Something amazing happened. Snufkin's face went very red and he gave Teety-woo's hand a shove. Teety-woo only laughed and fell back into his chair with a thump.  
At this point, almost all of the desks were filled, except for the space beside me. Somebody came pushing through the back of our chairs and she dropped her books next to mine. I jumped and looked up at her.  
She was very round. Her hair cut short to her head. I thought it was nice. Her nails were painted a pale shade of green.  
"Is this seat free?"

The girl had already placed her books on the desk, so I just nodded. She sat down and stopped looking at me. She pulled a cellphone from her sleeve, and I heard the quiet little chime. I could hear Snufkin and Teety-woo bickering, and part of me wanted to listen in, but I hadn't really seen a cellphone so close up before. We just have a landline at home. I never thought of asking for more.

The classroom door closed suddenly. Everybody went quiet and looked over towards the end of the classroom.  
The teacher was very big. She wore a weird sort of grey cardigan and black dress. Her hair was black and grey, too. Some huge bits were silver, the rest just dark. Like her scalp was marbeled or something. She stared around at us for a few seconds before trailing up to the front of the room and sitting in her desk chair.  
She started to say something, but I wasn't really listening. The girl beside me kept pressing the little rubber buttons in her cellphone, and Snufkin's face was still a little red after what Teety-woo had said to us.

 

He hung out with us after school. We went back to Emma's newsagents. It's been a sort of ritual that we have. We go there everyday even if we don't have any money. Teety-woo bought a sizeable packet of marshmallows. I bought Skittles. Snufkin wasn't hungry. We went to the playground beside our school and sat in the swings to eat our snacks.

The chain was cutting into my sides but I was too proud to get off. I decided to pop the question that had been floating around in my brain for the whole day. "You know that girl who sat beside me in Music?"

Snufkin stuck his hand daintily into my open packet of Skittles. He took out three red ones. "Yeah?"

"What's her name, do you know?"

"Snorkmaiden," said Teety-woo loudly. I had come to learn that he had a bit of a volume problem. He seemed to say everything in a shouty voice. "She's in the swim team."

"There's a swim team?"

Snufkin nodded. "Yes. It's not very well-organised. I wouldn't join it even if I could swim."

"You can't swim? At all?"

He wrinkled his nose at me. "I don't need to."

"He's like a cat, he hates water," said Teety-woo. "We went to a watersport activity camp for our first school trip, and he had to sit on the beach with the teachers the whole time."

"At least I didn't have to get into those nasty wetsuits."

I imagined Snufkin in a wetsuit. It was pretty funny. I imagined myself in a wetsuit. My smile dropped instantly. "I love swimming. I'd go to the beach all the time if I wasn't so fat."  
Snufkin gave me a strange look, as if he wanted to say something- but he didn't. Teety-woo just shrugged as if my statement was fair and shoved some more marshmallows into his mouth.

I've been thinking about Snorkmaiden for some reason. I remember there was a scar on her thumb that was paler than the rest of her brown skin. It seems I think a lot about people, and only really in the night. I don't know if that has to do with me being a teenager or not. I wish I was still twelve and Toy Story was still my favourite movie of all time.

\- Moomintroll


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so easy to update im wildin

16th May 1999  
Sunday

I've been having weird dreams. I'm not going to write them down.  
I spent most of today lying in bed with one leg in the duvet and the other out. I don't know what else to say, because I didn't really do anything else.  
The Girl With a Pearl Earring is still sitting on my desk. I should start reading it soon.

 

17th May 1999  
Monday

School is fine. I don't think anybody cares about the exams. I've been trying to study, but it never really works for long and I always go back to thinking about other things. I don't know what else is worse- daydreaming about other people when they're not there, or staring at them when they are. I see Snorkmaiden sitting across the cafeteria when Snufkin and I are having lunch, and she sits by herself beside the window with her head in her cellphone. I wonder who she's texting. I wonder if she'd text me if only I had a cellphone, too. Snufkin goes a bit quiet if he notices that I'm looking over his shoulder at her, so I try and concentrate, but it's hard. I was never one to focus much. Sometimes it makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me.

I know I've written nonstop about Snufkin ever since we met, but I guess it's because he's just interesting. I went to his house again this afternoon and I finally got to meet his dad. He's even weirder in person. His hair is thinning and he smokes out of a pipe. The only pipes I've seen nowadays are the colourful glass kind.  
Snufkin's dad didn't smile at me but he shook my hand and nodded his head stiffly, the way men often do. His eyes were blue and watery. After dinner (pizza, again) we were all given apples to eat while we watched the TV. I watched Snufkin's dad eat the entire thing from across the living room, core and all. Snufkin did the same exact thing, but he twisted the stem round and round until it broke off, and he put it in his pocket. I just ate my own apple like a normal person.

When we were up in his empty bedroom again, I put my hand his pocket and I took out the stem. He went a little still. I held it up and asked,  
"Why did you keep this?"

And he said, "I don't know."

 

19th May  
Wednesday

Today I was sad. Snufkin shaved all his hair off. When we met again at the bus stop in the morning, he showed up with his head all red and fuzzy and looked as if he was the happiest boy alive.  
I reached out my hand and touched it when he sat down on the old man's wall. It was prickly.

"Why did you do that?"

"I wanted to," he said. "I don't like having long hair."

I nearly said that I loved his long hair, but I didn't. I was sad for the rest of the day. I tried not to show it.

Snorkmaiden caught sight of me staring at her in the cafeteria. She stood behind me at the busted water fountain when I was trying to get it to work, and made me jump again when I turned around.  
She was wearing a black t-shirt. I got some of my white hair on it when she kissed me behind the school a few moments later.

 

21st May 1999  
Saturday

I think Snorkmaiden wants to go out with me. I really don't know why. She sat down next to me again in Music and wrapped her left arm around my right, making me go all sweaty again. Snufkin and Teety-woo talked to each other but he didn't really talk to me. Which wasn't strange, because Snufkin would sometimes switch off for the day and go off on his own after school. But I don't know. I felt strange.  
Snorkmaiden is really nice. She talked to me about The Beatles and her mom's handmade soap company. She asked me where I used to go to school and what kind of car my dad drove. I told her I didn't know. She said she had her very own Ford Anglia in the garage of her house, and that she would be able to use it as soon as she got her driving license.  
She's really pretty. Her eyes are the same kind of brown as Snufkin's, but there's no bits of green around her pupils. There's a mole on her neck that I like to look at. She kissed me again after school, and this time I wasn't as shocked so it was a little better. But still not very good. I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I just went along with it, I guess.  
Snorkmaiden gave me her cellphone number when she went home yesterday. She told me to call her in the evening, so I waited until 7pm on the dot to punch the numbers into the landline's keypad and wait for the dial tone to ring.  
She answered only a few seconds later.

"Hi, Moomin."

"Hi."

"How are you?"

"I'm okay. What about you?"

"I'm packing for Italy," she said, breathlessly. I stared at the wall.

"It's May."

"There's two weeks left until we go. That's not a lot of time at all, I'm absolutely busting my balls trying to pull everything together."  
That was the first time I ever heard a girl use the phrase 'busting my balls'. It made me smile.

"I guess you're right. I can be kind of hazy about that sort of thing."

"I'll come over to your house and help you pack. Where do you live?"

I told her where. She sucked her teeth audibly. "My cousin lives in your area. We don't speak to him."

"Oh. Maybe you could help me over the line?"

"Alright. Clothes first. Describe your wardrobe to me."  
I turned around and looked up the stairs to my bedroom. There was a little purple paint stain on the green carpeted steps. I sucked in my lips so that they disappeared between my teeth.  
"Well... It's wood."

"Yeah?"

"And there's clothes inside of it."

"Okay." She sighed into the receiver. The air made a loud crackling noise in my ear. "Are you in your room right now?"

"No, I'm downstairs by the landline."

"Get a piece of paper then and write down this list."

Here's the list that I copied:

1\. Underwear  
2\. Socks  
3\. Pyjamas  
4\. Toothbrush  
5\. Toothpaste  
6\. Retainer  
7\. Comb  
8\. Facewash  
9\. Shower Gel  
10\. Shampoo  
11\. Books (guess which one)  
12\. Wallet + Money  
13\. Deoderant  
14\. Passport  
15\. Suncream  
16\. Towel  
17\. Sunglasses

By the end of the phone call, I was getting kind of tired and fidgety. I said goodbye to Snorkmaiden and she told me to 'take her advice into account'. I said that I would and I put down the phone.  
I'm sitting in front of my open suitcase right now and there's nothing inside of it. Mamma came in a few minutes ago and said that she was impressed with how I was 'thinking of the future'. I wonder if Snufkin has started to pack yet. I think there's as much a chance that he has than if he hasn't.  
My back doesn't hurt anymore!

 

22nd May 1999  
Sunday

Snufkin and I went to the beach today. He came over to my house and I took him upstairs to my room. He was wearing this big old felt coat with a bunch of colourful buttons and embroidery on it. His nails were painted orange. I saw them when he trailed his fingers up the wall when we ran up the stairs. He opened my bedroom door and looked around as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

"What are these?" he said, reaching up to touch my plastic horses. I went very red.

"I used to be into that kind of thing," I said. Snufkin took one of them down and stroked her shimmery blue vinyl. He didn't say anything. He sat down next to me on my checkered sheets and ran a hand over the surface. I watched him.

"I like your nails."

He smiled at me, and pressed his tongue against his tooth gap again in an embarrassed sort of way. "Thank you. I can paint yours, too."

"You have some?"

He stuck his hand in his felt coat pocket. He pulled out a tiny bottle of silver nail polish. I looked at it, sitting comfortably on the top of his knee. "Give me your hand."  
My hand twitched. I thought of the vulgar writing on Snufkin's locker. I thought of the gum in my hair. I thought of the bruises on my back and how badly they had hurt. I thought of Snorkmaiden and what she would think of me, a boy, painting my nails.  
Snufkin noticed my hesitation, as he always did. "You don't have to."

"I want to," I said. I don't know if that was a lie or not. I held out my hand, and he took it very gently. His fingers were cold. He splayed mine out on his thigh and screwed open the bottle.  
I felt his warm skin under the thin fabric of his trousers, and for some reason my weak heart started to make my other hand shake about like a leaf. It was like how I became when Snorkmaiden took me behind the school a few days ago.  
He held my hand over his leg with his left and started to paint my index finger with his right. The polish was cold. I hoped to God Snufkin's hand wouldn't get too sweaty over mine.  
This is what I thought. I'm going to write down what I feel. As honestly as possible.  
When Snufkin leaned in a little so that his fuzzy head came close to mine, I thought about what it would have been like if Snufkin had kissed me behind the school instead of Snorkmaiden. I thought about what it would be like if he kissed me now, in my bedroom, with my parents downstairs. It frightened me so much that I pulled my hand away after he had finished the first nail.

"I'm sorry," I said, not looking at him. Snufkin sat back and lowered the brush.  
"That's okay."

 

We decided to go outside to the beach. It wasn't that far away, is what he said. My legs were aching by the time we reached the causeway, down beyond the end of our neighbourhood area. Our shadows were like huge stretched out versions of ourselves on the cement. Snufkin stood on the yellow buttercups and he walked along the walls the whole time, not talking much. He listened to me about Snorkmaiden. I walked over the manholes and daisies and told him about our kisses, and the list she gave me over the phone.  
We crossed the road and walked down another great concrete path of dandelions, fluffy clovers, weeds, ryegrass. Soon enough the grass and soil started to fade into sand and spikes. You know, when I was younger, I always had to pee when we went to the beach. But I could never do it, just because the beachgrass was so pointy. I won't get into any more details.  
Snufkin tumbled down into the dunes and pulled about a bunch of it.

I followed him and he twirled about, kicking the heads off of the little pink flowers.  
"I love this!"

I grinned. "Looks like it."

We climbed over the dunes and grass and got onto the sand itself. There were huge quartz rocks all over the place. We left our bags tucked behind them. I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my trousers. The two of us walked to very edge of the waves, where there was seaweed dried into the sand and dead crabs lying about all over the place. I sat down and used my finger to push little bunched patterns into the sand. The fried seaweed felt like rough leather. It smelled pretty bad. Snufkin stood on the sandworms in his boots and picked up crab shells to look at them before tossing them back into the sea. There was a great layer of brown stuff in the waves before it faded back to green, and when I put my foot in the water it was kind of warm and muddy.  
"Ew," I remember mumbling, feeling the seaweed sink between my toes. Snufkin watched me and looked as if he thought it was funny. He wiped the sand off of his fingers and bent down to untie his laces. He said, "I'm going to go in."

"Didn't you say that you can't swim?" I said.

"Not all the way," he replied. Snufkin kicked off his boots and threw them by the rocks. The heels clunked loudly. I watched him pull his trousers off and start to unbutton his dress. I stared back at the sea and felt a little embarrassed.  
"You don't have to take your clothes off!"

"What, you swim in your trousers and jacket?"

"Just tie it around your waist!"

"It'll get wet."  
He appeared in the corner of my eye. There was something white tied round his chest, and he had stuck the bits of beachgrass in his boxers so that they stuck out like some kind of demented green tail. It looked so weird that I couldn't help but smile.  
Snufkin swung his skinny elbows about as if he were warming up for some kind of charity marathon, and he blew a bunch of air out of his nose. "Right. Here I go." He sucked in his breath again and looked over in my direction. "Come in with me."

I looked back at him. There were stars in his eyes again. "What?"

Snufkin held out his hand. "Make sure I don't drown. We'll sink or swim together."

"Let's not sink," I said, shucking off my jacket before taking it. He wrapped his fingers around mine and started to march into the water before I could properly prepare myself- before I knew it, he was crashing in as fast as he possibly could and splashed me so that my rolled up trousers went all dark and soggy. Not that it really mattered. He pulled me forward so fast that I almost tripped. "Hey, hey, slow down!"

Snufkin did not slow down. He lost his balance and fell face-first into the water. I was dragged down with him. We sank.

"Oh! It's so cold!" Snufkin yelled, raising his voice higher than I had ever heard it.

I wiped the wet hair out of my eyes. "You knob, my clothes are soaked!"

He laughed. It was a wonderful sound. "The sea has claimed us! We'll never go back."

"This is our life now." I lay back in the water. It was freezing. Snufkin was still holding my hand, so I squeezed it. He squeezed it back, and leaned over me so that I could see the great cheesy smile on his face. He had no hair left to brush away, but his red eyelashes were stuck together with the water.  
I said, "You look happy," and felt an immediate stab of embarrassment. Snufkin didn't seem to mind. He just blinked and lay back in the water beside me. "I am."

You see my dilemma. I wanted to kiss him again, just because he looked so happy.  
But I didn't. I won't.

Right now I'm staring at the nail polish on my index finger. I want to scrub it off, but I don't know how. We don't have any remover. 

\- Moomintroll


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gghhuh sorry for any mistakes im FUCKING illiterate and too tired to read over this again lawl

26th May 1999  
Wednesday

Sorry I haven't written since the weekend. I've been busy. We started our exams today.  
Snorkmaiden was on my case about studying the whole week. She dragged me over to her house and said that we were going to quiz each other, which was fun. Not really. I hated it. Her room smelled like antibiotic medicine. She said it was her Victoria's Secret perfume and showed it to me.  
Anyway, we came into school this morning and were all crammed together in the cafeteria, that had been cleared out the previous day. Everybody was sitting so close to each other. I thought it was so inefficient. How easy would it be to just roll your eyes around and stare at everybody's answers?  
First we had Maths. Both the lower and higher levels were present. Some kids obviously didn't really care and they made obnoxious noises at the back of the room while the teachers were handing out the exam booklets. Some poor girl at the top was hiccupping pretty loudly and I guess nobody likes her so they were all imitating it. It was really annoying.  
I sat back in my seat. Snufkin was sitting two seats over beside her, and he looked back at me as if he knew that I was staring at him.  
I raised my eyebrows. He reached back and swiped a hand over his head, grinning. I grinned back, and suddenly felt pretty elated.

The exam went alright! For the first time in my life, I didn't cry while taking a Maths examination! It felt so good. I asked Snufkin how he did, and he said that he drew pictures of pigs all over the margins. That made me smile.

 

1st June 1999  
Tuesday

Last entry before I shove this thing into my suitcase. I don't want to bring it in my carry-on because frankly I'd rather die than let anybody know I write a journal.  
We're actually leaving tomorrow morning! I'm really afraid but also really buzzed. Last few days have been exciting. Finished last exam yesterday, Music. Hodgekins gave us all a stern lecture about alchohol after some parents phoned in about the Italian drinking age. Mamma brought me out to buy some things in town on the weekend, and Pappa gave me his camera and some of his weird old-fashioned books. He said,  
"This is a great opportunity to discover but a small part of the great, wide world. I want you to take as many photos as you can, and to write what you see. Listen to the guides and open your mind to all this new information."  
I said that I would, and then he said that he was proud of me. Then he went back to his study to continue doing whatever it is that he does.  
Snufkin's very excited.  
Okay, something happened last night. I didn't know whether or not to write it down on paper or to just hold it in my brain, but past experiences tell me not to keep it inside. It's good and it's bad.  
We went back to the park in the early hours and he leaned over me again in the grass.  
"We're going away in only two days. How do you feel?"

I looked up at his face over the moon. His voice was very soft. My heart was beating hard, and I wished he wouldn't come so close. "I'm looking forward to it, yeah."

"Hopefully be in the same room."

"I think we will. They've no reason not to put us together."

Snufkin nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose Snorkmaiden will want to sit next to you on the plane."

"That's not really up to us," I said. I frowned at the sky. "I don't think I want to sit next to her, if I'm honest."

"Why?"

I shifted about to that the grass rustled. Snufkin was still leaning over me. "She... I don't like her. Not in a bad way, of course not, not in the sense that I don't like her as a person-"

"You don't want to go out with her?"

"No. I'm not sure I even like girls at all."  
I went very red. I think Snufkin did too. His face burned close to mine.

"You mean..."

I turned my head away. "You're too close to me."

He sat back almost instantly, as if I had said something hurtful. He didn't say anything for a while, until:  
"I'm the same."

"You like boys?"

"Yeah."

I stared up and said nothing. Eventually he lay back in the grass, and it felt like something had become a little bent out of shape between us. Something that had been bending for a while, and that it would break soon if I didn't say anything. But I didn't. I didn't want him to know that I liked boys, and I don't want him to know that I like him, specifically. But maybe I do. Maybe it's a good thing he knows. Maybe he likes me too. That would be pretty funny.

 

2nd June 1999  
Wednesday

Surprise! I'm in Italy! I've a lot to say!  
We arrived at the airport at 3AM. Everybody in my year was already waiting in the hall place thingy, where there were people from all over the world hanging about with tired looks on their faces. The students were all sitting quietly on their great suitcases. Billy didn't have a suitcase for some reason. He only brought a great big loudspeaker in his arms as carry-on luggage, which everybody else thought was funny. I remember Snorkmaiden had a big yellow suitcase, and she was talking to Snufkin and Toft when I came in. She waved at me.  
"Hi, Moomin! Come over!"

I said goodbye to my parents. Mamma tried to kiss me but I wouldn't let her. I waved them out of the doors and went over to my friends.

Snufkin had quite an average-looking suitcase and bag. They were both black, which was weird. Green is his favourite. He didn't look tired at all. In fact, he did a cartwheel right there and then on the linoleum, and everybody was too sleepy to react with more than a smile.  
Toft pulled on his grey hair and gave me a nod. "Hello, Moomin. How did your exams go? Sucks to have to come in for Music on Monday."

I shrugged. "It was fine. I didn't do the practical, though; so I probably failed."

"You studied with me," said Snorkmaiden. "You'll be fine."

"I forgot to turn the page," said Snufkin.

Snorkmaiden shook her head. "No, you didn't. You pulled your cap over your eyes and fell asleep."

I laughed. Snufkin glanced at me, smiling slightly, looking as if he was pleased with himself. We all then queued up along these great red ribbon things and showed our passports to the lady behind the desk. I had mine in a plastic bag because I lose things easily. I had to fiddle with it a bit to take it out and show her, and she smiled like she thought it was a laughing matter. Snufkin was behind me. I got my boarding pass and so did he, and it turned out that we were sitting next to each other on the plane. Which was good.  
The check-in or whatever you call it was so stressful. We all had to take our shoes off and put them in these great plastic boxes. I was scared that I was gonna get stopped in the metal detector, but I didn't. Snufkin did. It was a routine check. He still went a bit ashen-faced. He later told me the story of how his older sister's girlfriend was once caught in the airport with a box-cutter in her pocket. I've seen her around. After that, we all went to the gates. I was hungry. Snufkin bought me a blueberry muffin and I shared it with him on the metal seats.  
Snorkmaiden held my hand and talked about Sorrento. She said that she was going to buy Italian lemons for her mom so that she could make some handmade lemon soap. I nodded my head and stared at the plastic aloe vera plants beside the walls.

The sky was bright by the time we climbed up the steps to the plane. The air hostess said 'good morning' to me. Snufkin and I sat down in our assigned seats and Snorkmaiden and Toft sat in the row in front of us. Snufkin pulled on his hat and raised his eyebrows at me.  
"Wish we were on a boat instead. Don't you?"

"Yeah," I whispered. "That would be so cool. I used to go out on the boat all the time back at my old home. We had a kanoe, as well."

"So did I!" He sighed. "We should go kanoeing. You know where I've always wanted to go?"

"Where?"

"Lake Michigan."

"Why?"

"It's big."

"Is there saltwater there?"

"I don't think so."

"I'll go too, then."

The plane journey wasn't long at all, mostly because I fell asleep. He didn't. I woke up just as we were descending, and he put his hand on my arm and said in my ear, "Good morning!"  
The air was so HOT! Roman air must be thick as cotton in the summer months. Compared to the atmosphere back home, we must have the lungs of mountain-goats. I said that to Snorkmaiden and Toft and they thought it was funny.  
I guess it was way colder where my family used to live. Sometimes it's like I just want it to be winter when it's the summer, and vice-versa... Why am I like that? I don't know. Must be my "adventurous spirit".

I pulled my dad's camera out of my bag and got it up and running. We were still standing in the airport parking-lot place. Snorkmaiden saw it in my hands and gave me a big smile. "Oh! That's such a good idea! Everybody, lean in for the picture!"

She pulled the others into her arms and they smiled. Snufkin's braces glared in the sun. I snapped the picture.

Our year was quickly rushed through the passport-checks and bits and bobs until we were all told to wait in the lobby for the bus. It was so hot and stuffy. Loads of people needed to go to the bathroom and stuff, and I had to take off my jumper. We talked for a bit amongst ourselves, until I noticed that Snufkin had gone a bit quiet. He was rubbing his arms and sticking his middle finger in his ear, looking around at all of the foreign passengers passing us by.  
He caught my eye. I wriggled my eyebrows and gave him a questioning thumbs-up. Snufkin just looked away and wrinkled his nose.

Oh man. Wait until I tell you about the bus ride. I knew Snufkin was getting kinda edgy so I asked Snorkmaiden if I could sit next to him, but she said no, and he said that he wanted to sit by himself anyway. But that wasn't so bad, right? I just sat next to my kind-of-girlfriend and looked out the grimy window. I find that Italy so far is red, yellow and orange. From the houses and the fields and the shops and stuff, it's all very warm and sunny. Even the seaside outside my hotel window right now is warm, though it's night-time now. Anyway, Billy and the other kids down at the back decided it was a great idea to blast very loud music throughout the whole ride. I could practically feel the vibrations in my bones. The teachers didn't even really care. Our music teacher just looked back over the top of her seat with this morose expression.

"Groke's giving them the stinkeye," said Snorkmaiden. "Ooh, I love this song. What sort of music do you listen to?"

I remembered our very long conversation about The Beatles. I figured it was better to stay neutral than to tell her about the weird folk tapes Snufkin recorded for me off of his television, so I just shrugged. "Whatever's on the radio."

"You're so boring. I need to play you some real songs."

Some time passed. Snorkmaiden fell asleep. At that point I looked at the red digital clock by the driver's seat and saw that it was 10AM. We had all been awake for hours and hours. I stood up in my seat and looked over the back of Snufkin's chair. He was curled up with his arms around his legs. I touched his head very gently with my silvery finger.  
"Snufkin."

"What is it."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Yes. I want to go to sleep."

I hesitated, before unclicking my safety belt and sticking my hand in my bag. I pulled out the orange ear plugs Mamma had given me for the plane. I had forgotten to use them. Lucky that I did.  
I stepped over Snorkmaiden, as carefully as I could so that she didn't wake up. She stayed fast asleep. I accidentally brushed her nose with my sleeve, but she didn't budge. I climbed over to the next row of seats and sat down next to him.  
"But you can't with the noise."

Snufkin shook his head and stared out of the window at the highway full of blurry graffiti and little red cars. I tapped his knee with the little plastic box and he glanced at them.  
"Here you go. Stick these in. I never used them."

"But they're yours, I can't."

"I can never get them to go in properly anyway. I have weird ears."

He smiled. "No you don't."  
Snufkin took the box and stuck the plugs in. He looked at the floor the entire time, but I could see his cheeks were pink. Or maybe that was just from staying on the bus for so long. I don't remember. But he rested his head on my shoulder and closed his eyes, and that was that. Nobody saw us. We were at the very front. So I pushed my hand into his and held it while we rattled on the road, and the music kept playing.

 

Eventually I had to wake him up again. We stopped at a garage type place where the driver could have a rest and the students could go into the shops and buy their lunches. They said we weren't allowed stay on the bus so Snufkin wiped the drool off my shoulder with a very embarrassed expression and we hopped out.  
Snorkmaiden was already inside. It was a very strange shop. It was very narrow, with an unecessarily high ceiling, and everything was hung up on metal spokes. They were selling strange things, like bags of huge pasta and great tubs of popcorn the size of my whole body.  
I wanted to keep hold of Snufkin's hand, but Snorkmaiden poked her blonde head behind one of the tubs and made me jump.

"Ah! There you are! Will you buy me something?"

I dug my hand in my pocket and pulled out my wallet. "What?"

She gave me a red can of Pringles, a yellow bag of Lay's and five packs of what looked like watermelon gum. I took them impassively and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you!" She walked off back outside of the shop, where the rest of the students were eating loudly. I saw her sit down beside Silky and Alicia, these two goth girls who liked to speak at the same time as if they were twins. I don't think they are. Alicia's got bright orange hair at the roots under all of that black dye.

Snufkin was studying the bags of pasta. "Thank you for what you did there. On the ride."

I said, "You bought me my breakfast, didn't you? The least I could do."

He turned and looked at me. The bits of green in his eyes were particularly shiny under the morning sun. "I'm very serious, Moomin. And I'm sorry for drooling all over your shoulder. Figuratively and literally."

I giggled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean that I've been-"  
Something hard hit me in the back of the head, and I dropped all of the gum. Some people laughed. A boy behind me yelled, "Crikey, that's a lot of mints! Washing up the old bucket!"

I don't know what that means but it sounds wrong. I picked up the gum and bought it quickly so that I got a plastic bag to put them in. I also bought these strange packaged mini pancakes and the biggest cookie ever for Snufkin. He told me over and over not to buy it but I insisted on it and the price tag was well worth the look on his face when I gave it to him. Very red all over. I could write a joke about that sometime. What's small, sweet and red all over? A cherry. Snufkin. An apple before he eats the entire thing like a madman.  
I gave Snorkmaiden her things, and we sat outside in the heat and the metal chairs and tables. Thankfully the garage shelter shaded them from the sun so that we didn't melt our asses off.  
My kind-of-girlfriend waved her fingers at me from across the tables and blew me a kiss. I gave her the thumbs up. I think that was the wrong thing to do because Alicia and Silky started to laugh. Snorkmaiden just rolled her eyes at me.

"What'd I do?" I muttered, pulling open the pancakes. Snufkin was grinning.  
"What are you smiling about?"

He shook his head and pulled his old green cap over his eyes. "Nothing, nothing."

 

The rest of the journey was a bunch of boring stuff. Snorkmaiden said she wanted to sit with Silky. I said that was fine and sat next to Snufkin again, who held my hand under the little plastic tables behind the seats. It was nice, but it made me really nervous. Boys don't hold hands with each other. I'm pretty sure boys don't do a lot of the stuff Snufkin and I do, like buy each other bits of food and lean in close to whisper things. I don't see him do that kind of thing with anybody else, not even his family. He just likes to do it with me. Which made me really, really nervous.

 

For the afternoon, we went to visit the Vatican City. It was a bit surreal knowing it was an seperate, individual country and not just a city as the title may suggest. It was full of pigeons, trinkety little shops, graffiti, teenagers with accordions, beggars, tour guides, cars and tourists. Everywhere! We had to split up in all our classes then. Class A followed a kind old lady with a yellow scarf on a pole, and although I was pretty much alone it was still a nice experience. I found it hard trying to listen to her when there was a huge, beautiful basilica at the end of the square. She said it had something to do with the Pope, but I don't remember what it was. I realised there were a bunch of tiny people crowded around the dome at the top, looking out into the fountains and paths, which was cool. But we didn't have time to go there. Everybody just posed for photographs, including me and Snorkmaiden. At the very end, after taking a great group photo before we had to leave, I pulled out my camera and walked up to Snufkin, who was standing by one of the gates, looking at the pigeons.

"Will you let me take your picture?"

"Why?"

"You look nice." What a stupid, stupid thing to say, but I said it! Snufkin looked at me, and his braces flashed in the sun again. He was getting freckles! Who does that?

"Alright. What should I do? Stand and smile?"

"Just do what you were doing."

He looks back at the pigeons, looking embarrassed. I leaned in and clicked.

We went back to the bus, and were on our way home! We stopped off at some seedy restaurant, which was very big and very empty and had tiles that were white and black. We were given pasta and tomato sauce, sausages, fried chicken and brownies for dessert. It was alright. The waiters spoke to each other darkly in Italian and said "You're welcome" very monotonously when I thanked them for the meal. It was pretty dark by that time, around 7PM. Still, the journey to our hotel took ages more. I think it was around 11 or so when we finally stepped out of the bus again and stretched our legs.  
The hotel is very thin and tall. We had to run up so many flights of stairs, past loads of normal apartments until we finally got in. It was actually very nice on the inside, which windows out to sea and seashells and coloured sand and stuff in the reception. We carted our bags into the lobby and were given the customary speech on how we were all expected to behave ourselves and whatnot.  
Turns out we might have to pay a certain amount of money outright as a sort of safety net, in case anything breaks in the rooms or something else gets damaged. The guy in charge didn't seem to like us.  
We were then sorted into our rooms. I got Snufkin, Teety-woo and Toft, of course. We were another floor up, over the girls.  
Snorkmaiden gave me a kiss goodnight and went into her own room. I think she wanted me to give her a kiss, too; but I didn't want to do it in front of everybody and be harassed for the whole trip. So I just left and went up the stairs with the boys.

The rooms are nice. I don't like the bedsheets, though. They're too smooth. Snufkin and I bagged the beds in the middle of the room, and the other two got the bunkbeds, haha. I'm far too heavy for bunkbeds anyway. I put my clothes in the drawers, but nobody else did. Teety-woo and Toft left the room to go and mess around with the others. Snufkin unzipped his suitcase and pulled out his washing things.

"Nice room," he said.  
"It's lovely," I replied. "The view's nice."

The view was, of course, the sea. We could see the mountains and cliffs, too. There was a tiny harbour in front of us where people had parked their little white boats, and somebody was looking around with a torch on the wooden landing stage. There was a dog with him. I went out into the balcony and looked down.  
Toft's voice shouted from beside me. I looked to the left and saw him leaning out of next door's balcony. He waved at me.  
"Nice place!"

"Yeah!"  
Snufkin poked his head out and waved, too. We both went back inside, and I lay back onto the bed. I watched Snufkin unpack for a while. He left a little brown book under his pillow. I wondered if it was anything like this book. Part of me wants to pull it out and open it, but I don't think I will.

Eventually, Snufkin rolled over and was lying very close next to me. I could tell he was smiling. I turned my head so that we were staring right at each other. His breath was tickly. I said,  
"What?"

And he said, "You look nice."

And I said, "Oh, fuck you. Don't make fun of me."

"It was sweet. You're sweet."

We paused. I got really nervous again. My hands itched. I wanted to get off the bed.  
No, you know what I wanted? I wanted to kiss him. So that's what I did.

I pushed my hand into his again, just like I did on the bus ride, and I kissed him. And he kissed me, like he really meant it. Like he liked me.  
It didn't really matter if neither of us really knew how to do it. He just pressed in and I smelled his smell and I felt as if it was the most natural thing in the whole, entire world.  
Snufkin pulled away after a moment, and he stared at me. I stared back. My hand was so sweaty, but he only squeezed it, and left my part of the bed. He stood up and walked into the bathroom. I watched the door shut and heard the lock click.

Toft and Teety-woo came back inside when the teachers told us all to go to our rooms and turn the lights off. I went into the bathroom after they did, and came back to slip under the smooth blankets. The others were talking to each other. Snufkin and I pretended to be asleep. He reached out his hand and touched my fingers in my dark.

\- Moomintroll


	6. Chapter 6

3rd June 1999  
Thursday

It's my birthday tomorrow. Today was strange. I'm writing this at night, so forgive me if my handwriting is completely illegible.  
I woke up in the hotel room and had a bit of a moment where all the memories from yesterday came flooding back. My heart started thumping, but it was in a good, excited sort of way. And when I turned around in bed I saw Snufkin sitting with his back turned, pulling on a pair of socks. I stretched and closed my eyes again.  
"Good morning."

Snufkin sifted in the sheets beside me. He lay down, making the springs in the mattress creak, and said, "Good morning. We have to go soon. Hodge's been in twice already."

"Where are we going today?"

"Amalfi."

"Wow."

"Get up and dressed and have some breakfast with me."

I sat up and stretched my legs out one last time before sort of sitting there and looking around the room. Snufkin left the bed and trailed into the bathroom. I watched his stripy trousers trail on the floor. There was a big hole in the back that needed sewing. I wondered if Snufkin knew how to sew or not.  
Anyway, I got dressed into some blue shorts and a white t-shirt because I knew it would be too hot to wear much else. I did my usual and rubbed sunscreen all over my arms and legs, combed my hair, rubbed my face with my hands just to wake myself up, you know. Snufkin opened the door and waited for me to follow him. We walked out into the odd lobby area which was now full of tables, orange juice and cornflakes. We both sat down at an empty table. I saw Snorkmaiden talking to her friends down the other end and suddenly felt very, very guilty.  
Did I cheat on her? Does one kiss count as cheating? I don't want to go out with her anyhow, I never asked. She just hung onto my arm and that was that. I still don't know why. I don't know why I appeal to Snufkin, either. Oh, lord- this must mean I really am gay. It just feels so uncomfortable writing it down.  
Anyway, he and I sat down and shared a croissant. I wasn't really hungry and I don't think he was, either, but he still let me cut it up the way my mom does sometimes and give him pieces at a time. He smiled like he thought it was sweet. I'm not sure if I want to be sweet. Sometimes I look around at the other kids in my year and wonder what life would be like if I looked and sounded like them.  
Would Snufkin like me if I were tall and thin and dark-haired? I wonder what I'd look like with a tan. There isn't really anybody in particular that I want to look like, but how I look now doesn't seem to gain me any popularity points.  
Snufkin is very thin, very short and scrawny. His voice is high, too. Higher than mine. At least I have that. He's older than me, I keep forgetting. Tomorrow we will be the same age. But only for three months. Outside of that, I'll have to wait another nine to be seventeen and to match him again. A whole baby could grow and be born between then. I wonder if any babies in Sorrento will be born tomorrow.

We had to get on the bus again after breakfast. Snorkmaiden wanted to sit with me, but a girl called Ninny told her she would give her some apple drops so she went and sat next to her instead. I was relieved. I think Snufkin was too.  
I did not like the bus ride. It was fine at first. I thought it was going to be a normal trip, through the red earth towns and streets full of painted plates and dusty cats. But NO! Half an hour through, the bus started careering round these great twisty cliffs- left, right, left, right, in and out, in and out, as fast as the driver could go over these roads about as thick as two pencils, where we could have all fallen and broken in half over the rocks and the sea below. Snufkin and I had to switch seats, I couldn't bear it. He held my hand and whispered that we were fine, and I tried to believe him.  
At some point we stopped and stepped off of the bus for some fresh air. We all sat on these small stone walls and looked below at the green sea. A little boat floated past, miles and miles and miles below us. There was a tiny island in the distance, and houses with no roofs climbing up the cliffs. Is it roofs of rooves? Moose or meese? I feel like both should be the latter but probably aren't. I took another picture of Snufkin with the ocean in the background. He looked nice. I said it to him and we both giggled as if it was an inside joke.

They started playing music again when we came back on the bus. Snufkin put in the orange plugs and he kissed me again. Right there when anybody could have been watching. It was very quick, somewhere on the corner of my mouth, but I still stared at him and looked pointedly around the vehicle to let him know he couldn't be doing that sort of thing.  
"Don't! What if somebody saw us?" I whispered, giving him a glare when he just smiled like it was something funny.

Snufkin rolled his shoulders. "I don't care."

"I do. I have a girlfriend."

His mouth twitched. "Not really."

"Stop it. I don't know what to do."

"Just tell her you don't want to date. It's easy."

I stared at him in exasperation. "Have you ever gone out with anybody? Or have you suddenly lost all of your braincells?"

"Can't hear you." He tapped his ears. I shook my head. "Yes, you can. Snorkmaiden is a little scary sometimes, Snufkin, but she's still a sweet girl. I don't want to hurt her feelings."

Snufkin looked at me. I couldn't read his expression. "You're a softie."

I'm not entirely sure what it is about those three words that made me go as red as they did, but It made me feel thrilled and offended at the same time. I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms. "Right, that's enough. I'm going to read my book now. Go to sleep."

 

When the bus parked, we all got off and I shook Snufkin awake. We were next to the sea, some red cliffs and a bunch of tall, white buildings. The teachers lead us past the mosaics in the walls and we were suddenly in another sort of square. There was a great big church with a lovely painting on the front and a bunch of marble steps. They forced us all to go up to the top for a group photo. Snorkmaiden grabbed my hand and bonked the side of her head against mine. I let go of her after the photo had been taken and she gave me a cross look.  
We were allowed to go around the shops and restaurants, and to come back at 2:30. Snorkmaiden made me go with her. Snufkin said "Cheerio" to me (again, I don't know anybody under fifty who says the word 'cheerio') and he wandered off on his own into a shop full of rude postcards.

Snorkmaiden and I went down the hill, past all the shops full of Italian flags, hoodies, toys, shirts, football jerseys, lemons, more lemons, sweets, wind chimes, plates, fake Michael Kors bags, pottery, and a lot of this bright yellow drink. It was called 'Limoncello'. Some were in Italy-shaped bottles, others were in dick-shaped bottles. Snorkmaiden bought a dick-shaped bottle. I stared at her all the while she was asking if it had alchohol in it, and the old lady said yes.

She slipped it in her yellow bag and gave me a mischevious smile. "I'll let you have some if you buy me lunch."

"You'll get sent home! That's what Hodgekins said!"

Snorkmaiden rolled her eyes and linked my arm in hers. "You're no fun. Come on, I want gnocchi."

She lead me back up the hill and we nearly got run over by a man in a red moped. She pushed me into one of the shops so that I didn't break any legs on the pavement and we were suddenly surrounded by this beautiful collection of seashell-jewellery. Snorkmaiden stared around at the bracelets and necklaces and looked as if she had just found an international treasure. "Oh! Look at all of this!"

I peered into a massive pink conch shell. It had pearl necklaces tucked inside, all with little price tags on them. Most of them were pretty cheap. I picked out a cowry-shell bracelet with a red cord, and tucked into my palm so that Snorkmaiden didn't see. She came up to me with a plain little golden anklet. She said,  
"Will you buy this for me?"

"Okay. How much?"

"Fifteen. Real gold."

"Real? But it's-"

She shrugged and gave me a sweet smile. "Please?"

I took it and went up to the desk. The man was very nice. He had white hair and black eyebrows. He slipped both the bracelet and anklet into seperate bags that had yellow and blue ink drawings on the front of the shiny paper. I put the bracelet into my bag, and gave Snorkmaiden her present. She gave me a kiss in the middle of the shop, which made the the keeper laugh.

I ended up buying her crêpes when she changed her mind about the gnocchi. We sat down by the church steps and she ate them happily. I suppose Snorkmaiden is cute when she's pleased. She's got dimples in her cheeks. And she rocked back and forth with the paper crinkling in her hands, so it must have tasted really good.

Unfortunately, I got bored of sitting down in the sun. I stood up and said, "I'm going to look around a bit more." Which was the wrong thing to say, because she frowned at me and said, "Why? Don't you want to sit with me?"

"I want to go and find Snufkin."

That was really the wrong thing to say. She put her crêpe down and I saw a great crease start to form between her eyebrows. "Of course you do. I can't even spend an hour together without you running off to him. You never have any time for me."

I panicked a little bit. "That's not true! Didn't I go and buy you that gold thing?"

She shook her head. "That's not the point! Sometimes I doubt if you even like me! Do you like me, Moomin?"

"Yes!" I did like her. But I was lying in that moment, because I know she wasn't asking if I liked her as a friend. So I said, "Well. Um. Snorkmaiden?"

"What?"

My eyelids got sweaty again. "I don't- I really do like you, but probably not in the way you want."

Her face screwed up. I thought she was going to cry. I totally panicked. "Don't- Don't cry, Snorkmaiden!"

"You think I'd cry over you?" she shouted, standing up on the marble. Nearby tourists were starting to look in our direction. I held my hands up placatingly, but she only threw the rest of her pancake on the ground and started to walk away. "You're delusional! Consider us done, Moomin! You're a terrible kisser!"

I watched her march off into a nearby ice-cream bar, kind of stumped on what to do. People were staring, so I picked up the paper and put it in the trash. I grabbed the strap of my bag and went walking down the hill again, kind of shell-shocked. Extremely embarrassed. Sad.  
I passed Toft. I asked him if he had seen Snufkin. He said that he was sitting on the fountain banks, and asked me if I was okay. I just said yeah and walked on.  
Snufkin was sitting beyond the shops, behind a brick wall where there was a very small water fountain full of little wooden Biblical figures. He was rolling up a skin. He saw me and scooched over so that I could sit next to him.

"What happened?"

I blinked at him. "How did you know?"

"You look like you just got dumped."

I rubbed my eyes. "That's 'cause I did."

"Oh dear. How come?"

"I said I wanted to go and see what you were up to, and she totally freaked out."

He stuck the rollie in the corner of his mouth. "That's life. Are you sad?"

"A little bit. She was nice. And she stole money off me."

I watched him bend his head over his lighter so that I couldn't see his eyes behind his cap. He blew out a bunch of smoke, and I realised straight away that it was not tobacco. Snufkin reached out his free hand and patted the top of my right.  
"Forget about it, Moomin. Snorkmaiden was always a bit unkind to you. Remember, she called you boring on the bus?"

"You heard that?"

He nodded. I took his hand and we laced our fingers together. His were thin and bony, and mine were big and soft. It was a nice contrast. I sighed quietly and watched the end of his rollie shrink with every hit. He said, "It's a pity you can't have any of this. Are you desperately asthmatic?"

I waved the smelly smoke away. "Yes. Well. I'm alright. I'd be scared of disappointing my parents. I've always been a very well-behaved kid, and they always call me in when the drug PSAs are playing on the television."

"Bunch of lies," he said, shaking his head. "That one with the egg? You know that one?"

"Yeah _. This is your brain on drugs_." Snufkin laughed at my high-pitched impression, especially when my voice broke. I went pink and squeezed his hand.

He stubbed out the butt-end and flicked it into the street. "You know what? When we get home, I'll make you pot brownies. How's that sound?"

"What are pot brownies?"

Snufkin gave me a look, as if trying to figure out if I was joking or not. I wasn't. He widened his eyes. "You- They're pot brownies, brownies with weed in them!"

"Oh!" I blushed again. "Sorry. I'm stupid."

"You're not. I was just a bit surprised."

"Can you get high off of just raw weed?"

He shrugged. "It works! You'll see. I don't make them for anyone else, mind. Only for you."

I'm really not sure how he managed to make pot brownies sound romantic, but he did. He really did. I felt the shock and slight sadness of my breakup fade away, and suddenly I was smiling again. Snufkin watched me and turned so that his leg was touching mine.  
"So, what do you say?"

"Yes, I guess I'll have some of your crummy brownies."

"I'll have you know they taste really good."

"How do you know? You said you wouldn't make them for anybody else."

"They're all for me and you. That's it. Just us together."

Again with the heart! I felt like my hands were shaking so hard they'd accidentally slap someone. Instead I sat on my left and stared at the cobblestones. There was nobody else around.  
"Us together, hm?"

Snufkin paused. "Sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say?"

"No," I said, quickly. "No. I like it."  
I wanted to say more, but I didn't. Instead I let him comb my hair with his fingers and pull me in for another kiss. It was good. I won't get into the details because it's embarrassing, but I did tilt my head and I felt his soft t-shirt.  
But that was mostly it. We had to go back anyway because our time was up.

 

In the evening, we rode over to this remote pizza restaurant where we all stood along this extra-long table and learned how to make pizza dough. The yeast smelled really bad and everyone was throwing it at each other. Snorkmaiden stood at the very opposite end and looked defiantly aloof. I watched her a little sadly and guiltily. Even if I wasn't into it, it was still sad for my first lukewarm relationship to end like that on our holidays. I hoped she would feel better soon.  
And as I played with the floury dough in my hands, I wondered about Snufkin and I. I suppose he's my second relationship. It's certainly not lukewarm. He touched me with his elbows and the side of his hip the whole time we were standing. Not so obvious so that anybody noticed, but he was doing it on purpose, and it was making me sweat.  
Because dough has to set overnight, we didn't get to make any. But we did get actual pizza in the inside of the restaurant itself. Everybody sat down and filled the tables evenly so that Snufkin and I had to sit alone at the end. But that way we got chosen first in line for our dinner.

We walked into the kitchen and told the lady what toppings we wanted. I got Hawaiian. Snufkin got mushrooms and not much else. We watched her stick them in the woodstock oven and were fascinated by the great flames.  
He talked to me quietly about how he wanted to go vegetarian when we sat down. He said that he didn't really like meat, except for fish.  
"I love fishing," he mumbled, playing the hem of my t-shirt under the table. "I don't think I've mentioned it. It's something I do by myself, and I don't tell anybody about it."

"Not even your parents?"

He shook his head. "My dad taught me how, but he doesn't know I still do it. Down the beach we went to. Over by the other side where there's all those huge rock pools. You know, the sand there isn't even sand. It's just millions and millions of tiny seashells."

"Will you show me it?"

"Yes. It's a really excellent seaglass-fishing spot, too. Your collection will benefit."

It was nice, to know a secret nobody else knew. We both had a secret together, I suppose, but it felt good to share some smaller things with each other too.  
The pizza was GOOD! I took a picture of it with my camera. I took another picture of Snufkin. He took one of me. I put it back in my bag, next to the new apron I had bought for Mamma and this big porcelain spoon with lemons painted all over it. I know she'll appreciate it, she loves lemons.

Anyway, it was night by then, so we went back to the hotel. I took a picture of the harbour. We all ran up the stairs and were told we could stay up until 1AM before they turned all the lights off. Toft and Teety-woo didn't stay in our room, so Snufkin and I took the opportunity to get some time alone.  
I think I really like him. I do. I really, really like Snufkin. He's strange, funny, kind and mature; he makes me smile when I think about his silly haircut and he makes me feel like a real person. Not a coddled child. Not some fat kid in the halls. He makes me feel like I'm worth telling a weird joke to just so he can hear me laugh.

\- Moomintroll


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for any mistakes im literally so drained right now

4th June 1999  
Friday

Happy birthday to me. I'm sixteen years old today.  
Snufkin woke me up at 5AM so that we could sit on the balcony alone and look out to sea. We sat on the tiles instead of on the metal seats, and he said, "Many happy returns," and gave me a little paper bag.  
I opened it. There was a card, and a piece of brown cord, with red and green threaded all through the sides. There was a tiny silver bell at the end. I tied it around my ankle, and it jingled every time I moved.  
I opened the card. It read,  
"Happy Birthday Moomin.  
Thank you for being a cool friend, partner in crime and partner in awkward kisses. Although I've only known you for about a month, you seem like a good egg. I wrote this in the bathroom so that you wouldn't see it yet and I suppose I look silly from where I stand in the mirror. But nevermind that. This card guarantees a whole tray of homebaked brownies, for you and me, whether they have pot in them or not.  
Have a good one. - Snufkin"

I put the card down and smiled at him. "Thank you, Snuff."

He waved it off dismissively. "No bother, no bother. You deserve more, I would have gotten you something bigger if only I had any idea what to buy."

"No, this is perfect. I love it." I jingled my ankle. The sky was pink, and I could hear and smell of the sea brewing up underneath us. I felt really happy.

 

We went to a theme park today. Very fitting, as it was very festive and colourful and every part of it felt like a great birthday party. We were let through the gates like wild animals and told to meet back there at 5pm. It was 12. There were kids and teenagers running around like madmen, huge rollercoasters over our heads, people screaming, fountains, a big lake in the middle, shops, merchandise, little restaurants- I thought it was great. I wanted to go on the biggest rollercoaster. Snufkin wouldn't go with me but Teety-woo and Whomper did. It was amazing, but I screamed and had my eyes closed the entire time so I guess it was a bit of a waste. Snufkin waited for me at the end with a wrapped icecream sandwich in his hand. He gave it to me.  
"How was that?"

"Scary," I said, ripping it open with wobbly fingers. "Thanks."

"Let's go and see your picture."

We walked into the merchandise shop. Beside the cash register, on these great big TV screens, they played a slideshow of pictures. All taken of customers on the rollercoaster, mid-scream. I saw mine appear. It was pretty funny. I looked like I was dying.  
"Shall I buy it?"

Snufkin just smiled. He slapped a twenty on the till and asked for one of those 'I Survived the Skull-Smasher' shirts. They gave him a tiny pink one and he pulled it on over his sweatshirt. That was even funnier. Snufkin didn't really want to go on any of the rides, which was fine, so he and I held everybody's bags while they gave themselves shaken-baby-syndrome.  
We didn't hold hands or anything like that while we walked around. But we did talk to each other, a lot. It was so HOT! I had to take off my button-up. Snufkin told me to put sunscreen on. He insisted on standing up on the bench to put some on the back of my neck and my arms where I "couldn't reach". His hands were cold, but they were careful, and it was thrilling to know he meant it when he touched me so kindly.  
In return, I asked him if he had eaten anything yet. We went to the little castle-themed restaurant and I bought him a cheese toasty. They had 'vegan' smoothies, whatever that means. I tried one with my bowl of couscous. It was nice.  
While we sat at the weirdo medieval-style tables, I thought momentarily about Snorkmaiden. I hadn't seen her all day. Maybe that was a good thing. I hoped she wasn't upset. I don't think she is, but I still don't know. But I guess when I looked at Snufkin bending his chin over his plate and sticking his elbows over the table, I was relieved. Because he was the guy I liked. And he liked me back.  
He raised an eyebrow at me. "What are you staring for?"

I reached over and tore a bit off his toasty for myself. He didn't object. I chewed on it thoughtfully. "Do you wanna do anything or just walk around?"

"Do what? There isn't much we can do. I don't like theme parks."

"I know. How come? Is it, like... a sensory thing?"

He nodded. "I get a bit..." He shook his wrist around. "Uneasy? With all the screaming and the music and stuff. I don't know why."

"I get it. We can sit behind the vending machines in the shade, if you like. I brought my drawing stuff."

Snufkin's face lit up. "You do? Will you let me see?"

"Yeah! Of course." I lifted a forkful of couscous and offered it to him. He leaned over and tried it. His eyebrows wriggled around. "It's spicy."

I smiled. "You don't like spicy food?"

He shook his head. "I don't even like ginger."

That made me laugh.  
We made our way out of the restaurant, down the paths, past the bathrooms and over towards the vending machines. Behind them was a great wooden cabin, and lots of palm trees where you could sit in the shade if you didn't want to suffer from sunstroke on the way home. We sat there on the ground with our knees at our chests, and I opened my bag to pull out my notebook and pens. The notebook was really thick, blue, and had fancy off-white pages. I haven't drawn much in it. Just a few things here and there, you know. I let Snufkin take the book and thumb the pages carefully.  
He looked positively enthralled. I felt pleased that I could make him so happy with not much at all. I suppose we were both just like that.  
He said, "These are amazing, Moomintroll. I wish I could draw like you."

"I'm sure you can, you're the arty type if I've ever seen it." I gave him my pen. "Go on, draw something."

He tried. It wasn't very good. But I know I'll keep it forever. It was a very tiny man, in a dress and a hat like a triangle. I squinted at it. "A wizard, is it?"

Snufkin went a bit red. "No- well- yes, it's a wizard. You're right."

"Have you read any of those Harry Potter books? They're pretty good. Oh- sorry, I forgot."

He gave me back the notebook. "It's fine. I listen to a lot of talking books on tape, you know. Just as good as reading."

Talking books! Imagine, slipping a tape into your player and listening to a book read back to you while you do the dishes. Technology these days, I tell you. I hadn't an idea about them until Snufkin told me. I wonder if Mamma knows about them. She's always fussing over how she never has much time to read anymore, what with all the housework.  
He and I sat there in the shade until 4PM. By that time, we were both very bored. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I wondered if it would be weird to kiss again. I wanted to. I just didn't know if there was a limit to how much you should get on with when you like somebody. Fortunately, he was the one who crawled over and initiated, so I didn't have a lot of time to overthink like I always do. It was good. I touched his back and felt the bumps in his spine all the while he was leaning, further and further, like we were going to melt into each other in the sun. He felt my hair and my neck and the sides of my arms, but his hands were a little feathery, like he was afraid of touching me.

"I really like you," I said, when Snufkin pulled away. He had both his hands on my shoulders, and they tightened just a little bit as he watched me closely. There was a sort of flighty expression on his face. He said, very quietly, "Why?"

I replied, "You're wonderful."

"You think so?"

"I do." I told him basically all the stuff I wrote last night, and he seemed embarrassed and pleased at the same time. Pleased in the sense that he smiled a tiny smile and looked down at the ground, almost like something had been confirmed in his mind. And then he said, "I really like you, too."

"Well, in that case, I'm having a great birthday so far."

He blew a bunch of air out of his nose. He was trying not to laugh. "Good. I'm glad you are."

 

When we had to leave the theme park, everybody got in for another group photo, which reminded me to take as many desperate pictures of the trees and the lake and stuff with Pappa's camera. I took another one of Snufkin, surprise surprise. I started to worry about the amount of Snufkin pictures. I'll have to take some out when I develop the film after all of this. Maybe I'll keep them under my mattress, the way he keeps his money likewise. That still makes me a bit nervous. But not as nervous as it used to.

Our year went to the supermarket to buy food as a last-minute-madcap-shopping-spree. Some people bought bags and bags of treats. I was one of those people. Snufkin bought a punnet of cherries. He wandered off over to the frozen-food section while I waited in line, holding his fruit and my snacks. Alicia was in front of me in the queue. She looked back at me with her crinkled witchy eyebrows and frowned, so that her piercings waved about. She said,  
"You really hurt Snorkmaiden, you know that?"

My heart thudded. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to."

She made a reproachful noise. "I know about you and that Snufkin guy. She's told me all about it. You know he's a drug dealer, right?"

"I know," I said, quickly. "It's just a bit of weed. It doesn't hurt anybody."

She glared at me. "My uncle died of weed."

How does that even happen? I forgot to ask Snufkin if that happens. He's asleep right now, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I just put on a sorrowful expression and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I don't want your pity," she said, turning back to face the queue. "Just know that Snorkmaiden is really upset. And we won't forgive you. I've got a grudge against you now."

And I get bullied for being weird. 'I've got a grudge against you now', who talks like that? Creep. I just shook my head behind her back and wrinkled my nose.

 

Back at the hotel, we were stopped by the teachers at the door. They told us we had to show them our bags, 'in case we had energy drinks'. Which nobody believed, obviously. We soundlessly passed word down the line of students, and apparently some kids had to throw their drinks over the walls. I guess they smashed. I didn't hear. Not all of them were found, however, and I'll get to that.  
I told Snufkin and Toft about what happened with Alicia and I. Toft leaned dangerously over the top bunk with a troubled expression, and Snufkin just sat in bed with his chin in his hand. Toft told me just to ignore them. That they were only girls. I didn't want to ignore them just because they were girls. I tore open my cookies and started to eat them pensively. Snufkin held out his hand for one. I offered them to him. He took one. Toft took one, too. Teety-woo came barging into our room just a few seconds later. He had something in his hands. It was a bright yellow bottle of Limoncello.

We all stared at him.  
"How did you manage to get that?" said Toft, wondrously.

Teety-woo giggled. He was obviously drunk. "I don't know! I just did. We have to hide it, though."

"That stuff is 50% alchohol," said Snufkin plainly. "The teachers are going to kick you into the sun."

"They won't," Teety-woo insisted. "They won't, honestly. We have to hide it. Do you want any?"

"No," we all said.

"C'mon. Toft, not even you? Not even when I showed you my secret tattoo?"

Toft shook his shaggy head.  
Teety-woo frowned at us and shoved it up his nightshirt. "Fine, fine. Stinky's so much more fun than you are anyway. Bye."

He left. Toft climbed down the bunk and wiped his sweaty hands on his t-shirt, looking absolutely distressed. "He'll be suspended," he mumbled, shooting us looks. "Of course Stinky did this. I can't let him get into trouble, his mom gets edgy about that sort of thing."

Snufkin nodded and stood up. "I'll help."

I stayed. They went after Teety-woo. I was left to my own devices for a while, where I ate the rest of the cookies and stared at Snufkin's journal. It was poking out of his pillow.  
I pushed it back inside and went out to the balcony.

 

All in all, my 16th birthday was good. I don't think anybody knew except for Snufkin and my parents. Which I don't mind. I wonder what my present's gonna be when I get home. I'm jingling my anklet now. I really do love it. It's like the way he paints his nails. I wear jewellery now, I suppose, but I can hide it under my socks if I want to.

 

5th June 1999  
Saturday

We went to the beach! I thought it was brilliant. It was different to the one back home, where there were worms and bits of smelly seaweed everywhere. On this beach, there were beds for sale, wooden paths, white sand, really clear water. You could practically drink it. I was worried about swimming in front of everybody else at first, but Snufkin wore a t-shirt with his swim shorts so I did too. It was so hot. Everybody stank of sunscreen. All the girls wore fake tan, except for Snorkmaiden, who was already pretty dark in the first place. She was really beautiful. She wore a green swimsuit, and held Alicia's and Silkie's hands in the green water as they waded out. I watched her and everybody else paddle as I sat in the damp sand. Snufkin was watching, too. He lay on his belly and gave me a look. "You want to go in?"

"Kinda," I said. "I don't know. I'm fat."

"Stop saying that. You look good."

I smiled at him. He was smiling, too, but not in a mean way. I think he meant it. I just rolled my eyes and folded my arms. "I'll go in a bit. I'm just mentally preparing."

"Alright. Help me make a sand-mermaid."  
I did. We dug, scooped and slapped great lumps of white sand together until they vaguely resembled a face and shoulders. I painstakingly pushed her a nose and lips, and Snufkin had a blast patting her breasts into shape. It didn't look half bad by the time we were almost finished. All she needed was some shells for eyes, jewellery and decency. We found a few red scallops, and that did the trick. I took a picture with my camera. I took another picture of Snufkin, sitting on his legs, admiring our work.

"If I go in, will you come with me?" I said, finally, after another ten minutes of nothing. He looked at me and nodded. We walked together over to the ocean. All the others students were over by the rocks. There was a lifeguard right behind us, so the teachers didn't seem very bothered. Snufkin grabbed my hand and I almost pulled away, but he gave me a determined look and pulled me into the water. I did my best to push away the anxiety of getting caught with another boy and followed him. The water wasn't really any warmer than it is back home. It was still freezing, but I guess the sun cancelled it out. We went in as far as our waists, and I sat down so the water came up to my neck. The cold wasn't so bad then.  
"This is lovely," I said, smiling back at the beach. Snufkin watched me.  
"Come down."  
He hesitated, before sinking slowly down into the sea beside me. He folded his arms over his chest. I touched his waist under the water. He smiled with his mouth closed.

"What's up? You seem a bit tense."

Snufkin shrugged. "It's just cold. I can't swim."

"You have me. I promise I won't let you breathe in the water." I was feeling especially adventurous. "What, do you want me to hold you just in case?"

"You're not funny!" he said, but he was giggling. "Later, you can."

"Are you insinuating something?"

"Stop."

I smiled and drifted back against the waves. I wished it was only him and me together.  
It's just nice, you know? I know I keep going on and on about it. I guess it's just nice to like somebody and to know they like you back. I could write about it forever.

 

6th June 1999  
Sunday

Sorry I didn't get to say much more yesterday. We were busy. More people got busted for alchohol. Stinky included. He's going to be held in school for another week after we get home for punishment. Speaking of which, we're on the plane home right now. There's only clouds outside the window.  
That's about it. I'll put this back in my bag before anybody sees.

 

\- Moomintroll


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very slightly risque

23rd June 1999  
Wednesday

I haven't written in this thing in ages.  
Now that SUMMER has officially started and everybody officially has nothing to do, it's like Snufkin and I are either sleeping at each other's houses or we're meeting in the morning and coming home at night. Mamma teases me a lot and says we're joined at the hip. I haven't yet told her he's my boyfriend.  
She works at the library most of the time nowadays. Pappa kind of stays upstairs in his room and writes. I went and developed the Italy photographs (I remembered to take out most of the Snufkin ones) and he was really impressed with the places we went to. He liked the Vatican City ones in particular. He also said he was proud of me, which was pretty cool.  
Mamma has been dancing around the house like a pleased old lady the past few days when she's at home. She's just happy. I don't know why, but I'm glad that she is. Mamma lets down her hair from its ponytail and ties it back with a red hairband when she's cooking our dinner. She said she wants to go shopping with me, which is embarrassing. She wants to buy me some new clothes. I'm happy with the clothes I have. They're boring, and mostly blue or grey, but they work.  
They used to dress me in these awful old-fashioned numbers when I was smaller. I'm talking little strappy shoes and knee-high socks. I'm pretty sure I had a sailor's outfit when I was really tiny.  
I think I have old parents. Apparently Snufkin's mom and dad are both really young, which was surprising. He told me a week ago when I stayed over at his house.

"My mom had me when she was twenty-five," he said, balancing his lizard on the back of his hand. His hair has grown out so much since he last shaved it, so it's soft now instead of bristly.

"Woah," I said. "So, what- she's-"

"Dad's thirty-eight, and my mom is forty-one."

"Wow. How old's your older sister? You're the second-eldest, right?"

He shook his head. "Nope. I have five older siblings."

"Five?!" I didn't mean to say it so loudly and incredulously. Snufkin only smiled at me and moved his lizard onto his leg. I settled back down on his bedsheets so that I was lying on my stomach, and my fingers were drumming on his left thigh.

"Three of them are in college. For now, I'm the third-eldest in the house. I have two older sisters who still go to school."

"Who? There's Mymble, and then-"

"My," Snufkin beat the heels of his palms together and wiggled his eyebrows in a thoughtful sort of way. "They're twins. My mom has had three sets of twins in her life, can you believe that?"

"No," I said. "How come I've never seen My?"

"You probably have. She looks just like Mymble, just angrier and a little shorter."

"Oh. I'm stupid, I probably thought they were the same person."

"You're not stupid." Snufkin reached down to place Lizard on the barren carpet and shifted in the bed so that he lay down on his pillow. He opened his arms, shyly. I scooched over and took the opportunity to wrap my own around Snufkin's middle, and he let me lie over him like a big weighted blanket. I stared up at him. The curtains were drawn, and he had installed a string of pink fairy lights so that everything was an interesting shade of magenta, including ourselves.  
"I'm still surprised your parents are so young. Mine are like... sixty."

"Really?"

I nodded. "Yeah. That's why I'm an only child. I guess I'm lucky to even be here, because they're so much older. My dad has totally white hair, you know. I don't think you've met him yet."

He shook his head. "No. Your mom's really nice, though. She looks younger."

When Snufkin came over for dinner one time, he said that Mamma had made a huge fuss over him; asking if he wanted juice, giving him napkins, insisting on second helpings, letting him choose which flavour icecream he wanted from the freezer. But I thought that was just normal. I guess since there's so many little kids in his house, he's just left to his own devices most of the time. It makes me a little sad. Thinking about him microwaving his dinner at night and eating it alone.

I hugged him then and breathed in the smell of his shirt. "You're warm."

"You're weird."

"Good."

He blew some air out of his nose and combed my hair very gently. "Do you want to do something? Watch a movie?"

"You mean those weird Polish horror films?"

"It was Czech, and it wasn't a horror film."

"To you, it wasn't." I gave him a kiss just below his chest, which made him laugh again. It was wonderful. He is wonderful.

He and I, other than doing stuff like going to the cinema and the national gardens and the taxidermy museum, don't do much outside of overly-friendly touches in public and kisses in private. I don't think he's big on hugs so I don't do that often, only when he wants to. Which is fine. I like touching him. He doesn't let anybody else do it. No, he just looks up at me and holds out his hand, and it's always kind of shaking slightly, as if he's a bit nervous. I guess I am too, but I'm getting braver.

Two days ago, when he stayed over at my house, I did something new.  
It was really late, something like 3AM. Neither of us could sleep. We were talking to each other really quietly about this and that. He was telling me about hiking, what equipment to bring, what shoes to wear, which tools would be appropriate to pack, all that stuff. I don't think I'm fit for hiking but I listened anyway. He gets really excited about travelling stuff. Not in the outward sort of way like most other people, but I see it when he grins all silly and he shakes his wrist about. He was doing that on the sofa, telling me about that time he went to Norway with his uncle when he was eleven.  
"... And we made a three-headed snowman together. It was so cool. We called it something in Norwegian but I don't remember what it was."

"Yeah? Maybe it was Norwegian for something like snow."

"Probably. I wasn't a very creative eleven-year-old."

"I'm not very creative at all."

Snufkin looked down at me, where I lay on the airbed. "Yes you are! You can draw!"

"Yeah, but I can only copy from real life. I don't have the brain-space for all the weird and wonderful ideas you come up with."

He smiled slightly. "I'm sure you can. You can be really funny when you put your mind to it. I'm not a funny person."

I shrugged. "You don't have to be. I like the way you are already."

Snufkin paused, before switching off the lamp-light. He slipped out of his blankets and sat down on the airbed. It wobbled. I moved over so that he could lie down. He did, and he curled his arms and legs around me so that we were close enough to feel each other's breath. My heart was beating too fast again. It always does. At this point I don't think I'll ever get used to it.  
Anyway, I couldn't see it in the dark but I think he was staring. He whispered, "Thank you for listening to me."

I whispered back, "I want to listen to you."

"Why?"

"I like how you sound when you're talking about something you love."

I felt him smile. "Thank you. What's something that you love?"

"Well..." I thought for a moment. "I like to draw. And I like to hang out with you."

"What did you do all day before you met me?"

"Homework, I guess. I'm kind of boring."

"Not in the slightest," he whispered. "You're just right. You're smart in a quiet way, and you're kind, and you're big and soft. And you've got long, blond eyelashes."

"Like a cow."

"No!" He laughed very quietly. "I love your eyelashes. I don't care if it's weird."

"I like yours, too. They're red."

"Yes, I'm ginger all over. Even my legs are ginger."  
He moved his left leg gently up and down my side. His leg hairs are, indeed, ginger. I know that for a fact. They're very see-through, actually, so it looks like they aren't even there at all from a distance. But I know they are. Because I felt them under my palm when I carefully took hold of one, just then.

Snufkin said, "Did you think we would ever be doing this? When we met?"

"Truthfully, no," I replied, petting his leg. "I thought you were so cool. I still think you're so cool. It's weird thinking about how we've only known each other a couple of months."

"Yeah. I feel like I've known you a long time."

"Me too! Maybe we met in a past life."

"I bet. I bet we were in love in our past lives."

I smiled like an idiot. He did too, and I kissed him quickly before saying, "We've come full-circle."

And that was when Snufkin let me lean right over him and kiss him deeper than ever. It was so good. Like in those books my mom doesn't let me read. He tilted his head and I felt his warm tongue on mine, which was really freaky, something I've never felt before. But it was pretty amazing! I still don't know how I had gone so long without kissing him like that. After a few minutes he started to touch my neck, and that's when I got the idea. I've seen it in movies and stuff. This is very embarrassing. God help any nosy bastard who reads this. But I kissed his neck. And he really liked it. I could tell, because he squeezed me softly and stroked the back of my head.  
He said, "Be careful," and his voice sounded so strange. It was higher than usual. "You'll leave a mark."

"What?" I pulled away, suddenly very concerned, and he stopped squeezing.

"You'll- have you ever done that before?"

"No," I said, truthfully.

"Oh. Nevermind."  
He lay back beside me, and I held his hand under the blankets. Both our palms were kind of sweaty, but it didn't matter.  
We didn't say anything else after that. I guess we were both thinking about what had just happened. He went back to the sofa and we eventually fell asleep.  
It turns out I did leave a mark. It looked like a strangely shaped bruise, just under his jaw. And Snufkin was not pleased with me. He left without eating any breakfast. I had to tell Mamma that he needed to get home to take his liver oil vitamins.

 

25th June 1999  
Friday

Mamma and I went shopping! It was absolutely awkward and I will tell you why!

She brought me round to the little shopping centre in town where all her favourite grandma stores are. First, she wanted to go to the supermarket, then she changed her mind because she didn't want to haul around bags of milk and eggs around the place. Then she dragged me into this soap shop. I think it was soap. It was a bunch of smelly woman-y stuff out of fancy bottles, like moisturiser or something like that. She sprayed some lavender perfume on me and I smelled like an old lady for the rest of the day. Mamma just loves lavender for some reason. She keeps it in jars around the house, like we're engaging in some sort of diluted voodoo.  
After that, we went to one of those boring universal clothing stores that sell things like salmon cardigans for elderly women and navy puffy jackets for middle-aged men. There was a 'teen' section. She brought me there and pointed out all the shirts she thought I'd like.

"What about this? This one's nice," she said, taking out a blue button-up. I have one just like it.

"I already have that," I gently replied, but I still took it from her and gave it a good scan to be polite. As weary as I am with Mamma's unfashionable motherings, I think you'd have to kill me before I'm unkind to her.

"Oh. Yes, you do," she said, frowning. "Sorry, sweetheart. I'm getting a bit forgetful. Must be the summer air."

We rifled through a few more clothing racks. I did actually like one of the t-shirts. A navy one, with a small Tintin graphic on the front and some french writing at the back. I used to love Tintin. Mamma also insisted on buying me a pair of jeans because they were "in". I don't think I've ever worn jeans. She made me try them on in the changing rooms and they felt really odd. I haven't worn them since. They're still in my wardrobe now as I write this.

Finally, she wanted to buy some crochet yarn, because it 'really was time we had a new tablecloth'. Thank God I don't have any friends. I don't know what I'd do if Toft wanted to come over and he was made to eat smiley-fries from a crocheted tablecloth.  
Anyway, while we were walking around the wool shop, looking at skeins of varying sizes and interesting colours, Mamma stopped sorting through the baby yarn and said to me, "Moomin, have you been going on any dates recently?"

I stared at her. I'm positive I went scarlet. "Why?"

She continued on her sifting and pretended not to notice my red face. "Oh, you know. New school. New friends. I'm sure you've met lots of lovely new people the past couple of months, haven't you?"

I nervously stuck my wobbly hand into one of the baskets and felt the scratchy green wool. It made me shiver. "Yes. I suppose. I have dated, Mamma. But not really. I didn't really like her all that much."

"And who was this?"

"Some girl in my year," I mumbled. I really didn't want to talk about this. Especially not in the wool shop, where the employees in green aprons pretend to stick price labels on knitting needles while they listen in on all the gossip.

"A girl?"

I blinked. "Yes."

"I see. Anyone else? Or is this another one of those teen secrets?"

Oh, I love her dearly. Mamma tries her best to connect with me, she really does. And we do for the most part. That's why I suspected she knew. Just from the weird, specific questions she was asking. But I didn't want to tell her in public.  
So when we were driving home in our blue Ford Aerostar, and I was balancing a huge plastic bag of groceries in my lap, I told her quietly that Snufkin and I were dating.

Mamma nodded, and said, "I thought you might be, I just wasn't sure if I should ask. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in the shops, darling. I only wanted to see if you would tell me."

"Was it obvious?"

She glanced my way, and there was something like a tiny smile on her face. "Well... No, not obvious, of course not. But I never thought you were one to chase after girls, if you know what I mean."

I absolutely wanted to die in that moment. But I think I'm glad that Mamma knows now. Or maybe I'm not. I don't know. But she made shepherd's pie this evening, which is one of my all-time favourites, so at least I know she still loves me.

 

\- Moomintroll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> moominmamma: (wearing a t-shirt that says 'i love my gay son')
> 
> I swear i'll write something actually interesting next chapter i just have work tomorrow yee yee


	9. Chapter 9

Snufkin's Journal

26/6/99  
(Four days to go)

Medical Equipment and Pharmacy. Those four words are absolutely burned into my brain. I can hear them being said to me over and over again in my mother's voice, I'm not sure why. It just does, and as well as that, I think about her cursed store all the time, especially at night. I don't know. The sandal shoes are what I see. The old people in the windows. My own reflection is always too dark to see when I try and look inside. I don't like mirrors. Mom said she was going to bring me to McDonald's yesterday evening because she wanted to talk to me. So I show up outside Mymble's Medical Equipment and Pharmacy at seven o' clock. She turned the flickering lights off when she saw me standing outside again and pulled down the wire gauzing.   
I smelled the disinfectant on her bootleg uniform, the one that feels like blue paper instead of fabric. Mom unpinned her name-tag and dropped it into her pocket. She said, 'Hello, Snufkin. It's just you? No-one else?'  
I said, 'It's only me, no-one else.' I know I've said it before but I really like how that's our tagline together.  
Her hair was coming out of its bun so she just pulled it out and we started to walk down the pavement. I didn't remember to look at the sky.  
Okay, Dad just called me for dinner and my hand is really aching anyway so I'll come back to write what happened later.

 

I'm back, Dad made beans on toast just for him and me and it was great. Me and Mom went to the smaller McDonald's around the corner and there was nobody there except for the employees which was cool. I hate McDonald's because everybody always shouts, and it smells really bad, and something is always beeping in the kitchen. But I suppose the mother wanted to go, so I said I would and she also wanted to talk to me. I've written that already, oops. Anyway, Mom asked me if I wanted a Happy Meal and she bought herself fries. I always get a Happy Meal. It just feels like it's what I'm supposed to do! It's a tradition!  
We used to go get McDonald's all the time when it was just the five of us but then Mom had the Twins. And I don't mean the TWINS, as in the original twins before Mom married Dad. I mean the Twins. Both sets. And then there's Jukka, who's the youngest boy so he gets spoiled.  
I'm a boy too, but he's got black hair like Dad, and Jukka wasn't once a girl like I was.   
We sat upstairs beside the window and we ate our food. The lights are terrible in there. I felt like my eyes were being burned out of my skull. I could either only look at the ground or at my hands. I was fiddling with the Happy Meal box on the table and Mom saw the prison tattoo under my finger. She took my hand and stared at it, and I had to sit through like an hour of her giving out to me about pins and tetanus and blood poisoning and how I could have died. I'll draw a picture of the tattoo here. It's a 7-pointed star. 

 

Anyway, after being chewed out, Mom brushed the salt off her uniform and gave me one of those looks. I didn't know what it meant so I just guessed and tried to look somber. She said, 'What are you sad for now? What's done is done. You'll regret it when you're forty, and that's all you deserve for being so careless.'

'How do you know I'll live to be forty?'

She rolled her eyes. I saw her angry wrinkles. She's got sunspots on her ears and shoulders, have I said that before? I don't remember, I'm too lazy to go back and check right now.   
'Don't be saying that, you hear me? Let's just forget about it. All I want is to have a chat with my good son."

She told me that she was worrying about me. 'I never see you around anymore. Half of the time you don't even sleep at our house. It makes me wonder what you're up to. Where do you go all day, hmm? I hope it isn't anywhere dodgy.'

I shook my head. 'No, I'm with Moomin.'

'Everyday?'

I said yes. Mom sighed through her nose. 'You must be very taken with him in that case. What, is he your boyfriend?'   
I think she was joking, but I nodded my head anyway. And then she widened her eyes, so it really must have been a joke. 

'You're not serious? Is he really?'

'He's my boyfriend.'

Then we talked for a while about that. I stared out the navy window and saw myself against the sky outside. I couldn't even hear what she was saying. I didn't want to talk to her; what Moomin and I have is something private that we share together and I don't want her to know about it. Speaking of which I am thinking about him a lot when he isn't there with me. I love him. I love him so much, because he's gentle and he listens to me and he just rubs me the right way. Moomin has only known me for such a short space of time, but he's so romantic, I feel so dizzy. He asks before touching and he opens doors for me like a nerd. I want to visit him now, but I suppose it's late and he gets cranky if I don't let him sleep.   
I'm thinking of telling Moomin about my plan. Now that I know what it's like to have somebody love me I don't want to let go of it. But if I'm going to try again, I have to be on my own. They found me last year. I can't let it happen again. Moomin's sweet old parents would be so sad if he left with me.


	10. Chapter 10

29th June 1999  
Tuesday

Strange day today. Snufkin came to my house high as a kite this afternoon and told me I was coming with him to his sisters' new theatre show. I kept him in my bedroom for a while until he sobered up and eventually we came downstairs again to get glasses of orange juice.  
"You don't have to, but I'd like it if you came with me," he said glumly, tracing a finger around the rim of his glass. "It's Rocky Horror. You know that movie?"

I didn't. Snufkin wasn't surprised. "I would tell you the story, but I think it'll be fun if you just came along and experienced it first-hand. It's just a bunch of singing and dancing. There'll be a bunch of people attending."

"I get it," I said, downing the dregs of my own glass. "Don't you worry, Snuff. It sounds like fun. What time is it at?"

"Doors open at 7:30, show starts an hour after."

"And who's in it?"

Snufkin sighed and scratched at the acne around his nose. He leaned back into his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Mymble, she's playing the Columbia character. And My is just one of the background dancers. She's quite good at it."

 

And so later on Snufkin's family and I packed ourselves into their van. Mymble and My sat beside each other. I finally saw the differences. Mymble was, of course, really pretty and long-legged, and she wore this amazing blue glitter on her lids and these fantastic fishnet tights under her plain navy jacket. My looked like a condensed version of Mymble. She was smaller, thinner, grumpier... almost reminding me of a raisin next to a grape. Mymble's eyebrows were filled in with pencil, and hers were completely nonexistent if it weren't for a few see-through wispy bits and the constant angry furrow. My wore black leather gloves, white panstick, some black stuff on her cheeks... the rest of her costume was in the cloth bag in her arms. The laces of her boots were undone and they flicked loudly against the carseat every time she swung her feet around.

Joxter suddenly leapt into the driver's seat a few minutes later, making us all jump. He slapped the dashboard with the heel of his palm and yelled, "Are we ready?"

Nine of us, including myself and all of Snufkin's siblings, shouted "Yes!" at all different times. Then Snufkin's mom got into the car; and for some reason she gave me this strange look, just for half a second. I don't know how to describe it. She sort of squinted and then turned back to the window. Snufkin crossed his legs and kicked Mymble's seat.  
When we arrived at the theatre, I was surprised that it was in fact one of the great glass-pane extravagant ones in the middle of the city, as opposed to some old rented stage. Mymble and My kissed their parents goodbye and hurried around the back of the building, where the stage door must have been. We had to scan our tickets at the front. I think Snufkin's family had gotten them free, because I doubt they were able to afford for eleven of us at a time. There were these boys in maroon uniforms and they smiled at me as we walked in. We discovered that our tickets were holographic and expensive-looking, and that she shone secret silvery images of Biblical figures if you looked at a certain angle. Snufkin and I wobbled them about in the evening light as we sat together in the lobby, waiting for the show to start.  
I noticed the words on the ticket, 'Be warned; this show may contain rude bits' typed in bold black letters. I showed it to Snufkin.  
"What do they mean by rude bits?"

"Means this lot shouldn't be here," he replied, pointing at his younger siblings. They were all either picking their noses or tearing up the show guides on the glass tables. Snufkin's mom had gone to buy popcorn at the desk, so Joxter just sat in the purple chairs among the kids and jigged his leg absently.  
Snufkin does that too, I've noticed. He was going a little crazy with the wrist movements just then. He brought them up to his face, slapped his palms together, shook them the way he does after writing for too long. I gently put my hand on his forearm and he looked at me.  
"Are you alright?" I said quietly. Snufkin nodded.  
"I think so. I always get a bit nervous before these things, I suppose, even if I'm only an audience member. Did you know I used to do theatre stuff, too?"

"Really??"

He nodded. "I really hated it. I don't enjoy performing for people I can't see through the stage lights. Performing is something intimate."

Snufkin has told me in the past that he sings songs for fish that he catches on the weekends. He says that nature is something to be respected, and that you always thank every flower you pick or every fish you hook for their gift and their life on the earth. I think I would have thought that was really weird a year ago from now, but somehow I understand it now that I know him. Snufkin's weird, but weird in a way I actually get. Sometimes I see him crouching down on the pavement when we hang out on the road, because he's accidentally after stepping on one of the red mites. He plays his harmonica for the beetles in the grass and for me, when we're alone. I feel really special when that happens.

"I can't imagine you in a stage costume," I said, looking around at the people who were now milling in for the show. They were wearing pretty scandalous things, in my opinion. Things like garters and socks and corsets in broad daylight. I was starting to become a bit suspicious of these so-called 'rude bits'. I really didn't have a clue what I was in for.

"Me neither." Snufkin sighed and sat on his hands to stop them from moving about. "I guess I'm just nervous because of the speakers they have next to the stage, but I brought the plugs."

"Oh, good." I pretended to lean over him and grab the soda bottle on the table, but really I kissed him on the corner of his mouth, and he smiled because of that. Nobody noticed or minded.

 

We sat in our seats at the very edge a few minutes later. And let me tell you, that was not a show I was expecting. I really don't know what I was expecting but I probably should have known from the dressing-up I had seen in the lobby. My parents would have been appalled. I think I was appalled but quickly started to enjoy it. The songs were great. All of the costumes were red and lacey and sparkly, and we could see My creeping about with the other dancers in this amazing black get-up. Mymble, though, was amazing. She was Columbia, of course, and her costume was brilliant. Gold and glittering, a top hat and a coat, shorts that went right up the top of her thighs, inventive holes in her tights. She ran about the stage like a madwoman and waved her glitzy cane around like a windmill. Oh! That guy, Frank? Whatever his name is, my listening comprehension is terrible- he was so cool. Absolutely ripped. Wearing pearls and tattoos and muscles and makeup and high-heels all at the same time. I thought he was brilliant, whoever the actor was. Snufkin knew the words to all the important scenes and even the dance at the end. He put both his hands in the air and showed me how to do it, even though I felt silly for being probably the only one in the audience who had never even heard of the movie before this morning.  
It was really funny, too. I think Frank slept with both Brad and Janet, which was absolutely insane! The whole thing was insane! My mind wanders a lot during movies and books and stuff, but during those scenes my eyes were wide open. It was so crazy. I literally couldn't blink. I forgot that Mymble was even there because she played her character so well.

I stayed over again at his house afterwards, and I'm writing this beside him while Snufkin sleeps. It must be something like 2AM, I'm so tired. We talked for ages about the show and the movie. Snufkin called it a 'cult classic', whatever that means.

Anyway, other than today, nothing cool is happening. I've basically been sitting at home doing nothing if I'm not with him. Sniff sent me an e-mail a few days ago. It's very long and boring and he goes on and on about his recent Economics exam in it. Our terrible internet connection stops working whenever anybody uses the phone in the hall, so I haven't had time to reply to him but I guess I'll have to hurry up about it soon. He wasn't a very fun friend but he did stick by me all those years. I suppose I miss him sometimes. Mamma says we should go and visit him in August.  
I asked her if we were going to go on a proper holiday this summer. She said she'd like to go to France, but in the way mothers do when they don't believe what they're saying. We've been to places like Spain and America when I was little, but that's about it. Pappa has bad rheumatism so we don't get to do much anymore. He's been all over the place, apparently. I really want to read what he's written in his memoirs so far but he's keeping it all very secret for now.

Other than those things, my life has been boring. I've started reading 1984 because nobody ever shuts up about George Orwell but I don't get it. I bet Snufkin would. Maybe if I bought him the audiobook he would give it a listen and tell me what it all means.

 

1st July 1999  
Thursday

Snufkin is acting really weird. Weirder than usual. He won't look me in the eye and his back was curved when we were sitting on his front doorstep.  
He pressed a small paper bag into my hand. "Gift."

I was really confused, but still pleased- because it was a tiny bottle of dark blue nail polish! There were bits of shiny purple stuff in it. Like glitter, but far too fine. I unscrewed it and painted only my index fingers.

"Thank you so much, Snuff. I love it. What's the occasion?"

Snufkin said nothing. I thought he was just watching me, but he sniffed and I looked up and saw him sitting on his hands, staring out into his front garden. The gate was open. The Cat was sleeping on the square cement bit over the wall.

I said, "Are you okay? You seem a bit upset."

"I'm okay."

"Are you sure?" I don't know why, but I had this terrible feeling that something bad had happened to him. But I didn't know how to find out whether or not it had. I just sat there.

Snufkin just blinked, and replied, "Yes."

We had spaghetti bolognese in his house that evening. It was really funny because they all the kids call it "spag boggle" and Snufkin's dad announced very loudly that he had a "spag boner". It made me laugh so hard that orange squash came out of my nose and I had to go upstairs to the bathroom for a tissue.  
His dad really intrigues me. His name is Joxter. He speaks like one sentence in a thick accent every two weeks and it's always something hilarious. Other than that, he just sits in front of the television and doesn't do anything. I don't know if he has a job or not. He goes out at night in a waistcoat and wears a metal nametag so my theory is that he works the night-shift at some kind of fancy hotel.  
Anyway, I went home after that. I really hope Snufkin's alright.

\- Moomintroll


	11. Chapter 11

2nd July 1999  
Friday

It was Pappa's birthday today. Mamma crept into my bedroom last night just before I went to bed and slipped me the card. It was a very boring card. Blue frame, little Scottie dog in a party hat, the words 'Happy Birthday' written in red letters. I didn't get a card for my birthday. Only the one from Snufkin. I did get promised a cellphone, though, when I'm seventeen. So my birthday present next year will be a double-whammy.  
Anyway, I wrote my sentiments in the card and we gave it to him at breakfast-time this morning. He sat at the end of the table as usual and looked confusedly up from his newspaper when Mamma flashed the envelope. "What's that?"

"Your birthday card," she said, handing it to him. "You're sixty-three today."

"Good lord, am I really?" Pappa took it and used his butterknife as a letter-opener. He got buttery crumbs all over the paper but didn't seem to notice and went straight into reading-aloud mode. "Dear Moomin, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I love you very much. You should know I will be making another Sunday roast tonight as well as yesterday, as I know it is your favourite. Love, Mamma.

Hi Pappa, Happy Birthday. Love you lots. From your son, Moomintroll."

Pappa set the card down beside his bowl of porridge and smiled at us both. "Thank you very much, dears."

 

They wanted to go to Ikea to look at mattresses and eat some meatballs (Pappa's idea of a fun birthday party). The nearest Ikea is like an hour away and it's always so boring when we go. So I said I didn't want to because I was 'feeling unwell'. Bad idea, Mamma gave me some Lemsip and wrapped me up in a few blankets on the sofa. It made me feel worse when she turned the TV on and gave me a kiss on the forehead. They said to keep inside and not to open the door to any strangers. When their car was definitely gone I turned the TV off. 

My answered the door to her house when I knocked on it a few minutes later. She saw me and cracked it open so that I could come in, and said, "Snufkin's upstairs," while checking herself in the huge mirror above the frog tank. "He's a bit ill right now, though."

"Ill? Is he okay?"

She shrugged. I quickly went up the stairs and knocked on his bedroom door. "Snufkin? It's me."

"Come in."

I turned the handle and saw him lying in bed under the blankets. Lizard was in his terrarium. There was a small pile of clothes in one corner of the room. Other than that, it was as barren as ever. I walked over to him slowly and felt over the sheets so that I wouldn't accidentally sit on his legs.   
"Are you sick?" I asked, as Snufkin raised his head to squint at me. He looked alright, just a bit dishevelled. "Time of the month," he said. I nodded. I know he gets those, I've known for a while. It doesn't bother me. But it certainly bothers him. I rubbed the side of his body very gently over the blankets and gave the wall a thoughtful look.   
"Do you need anything? Or do you want to be alone?"

He shook his head. "No, stay. I'm fine. Just tired. Will you get in with me?" Snufkin pulled his hand out of the covers and touched my arm. I nodded and kicked off my shoes. He shifted over to the wall to make some space for me and I rolled over in beside him. It was almost too warm, but still nice. I brushed his hair out of his forehead and he stared at me for a bit.  
"You don't even want a water bottle or nothing?" I mumbled, a bit cluelessly.   
"No," Snufkin replied. His voice was soft and patient. I felt myself relax beside him, and he slid his hand into mine between us. "Really, I'm okay. How are you?"

"Me? Good. My parents have gone to Ikea for the day, and I'm supposed to be sick with a cold."  
Can you believe Snufkin has never been to Ikea? Seeing as he's part Swedish I would have thought he'd have gone at least once. But no. I don't think he'd like it. The smell of food and furniture at the same time makes me feel a bit sick whenever we go. And there's always little kids running around and shouting.  
Anyway, after a while of me just talking mindlessly about stuff that doesn't matter I got out of his bed and went home. He looked almost sad when I said goodbye. 

 

4th July 1999  
Sunday

Snufkin came over and rang the doorbell while I was getting dressed this morning. I stumbled down the stairs again, half in my trousers, and saw him through the cloudy glass window. He was dressed strangely when I opened up and said hello. And when I say strange, I mean as in relatively normal.   
Snufkin smoothed the front of his black t-shirt and said, "Good morning. Alone, are you?"

I let him in and brushed the hair out of my eyes. I need a haircut. My forehead always gets so sweaty in the summer.   
"My family's gone," I said, giving him a look up and down. "Why are you wearing jeans?"

Snufkin glanced at his legs. "You don't like them?"

"No, no, I do. Just weird seeing you without a skirt or something stripy."

"Ha-ha. Listen, I have-" Snufkin pulled a tenner out of his pocket and held it in front of his wrist. "Money, and I would like to sweep you off your feet to the tea bar in town. Come out and I'll give you a cross-bar."

The thrilling thought of a date instead of a day in front of the television won me over easily. Snufkin took hold of my hand and guided me down the sunny street to his house. I remember we laced our fingers together. He hauled his sister's huge red bicycle over the front wall and it bashed onto the pavement. The bell clanged against itself loudly. I looked at it, then at him, and said, "This is our vehicle, then?"

"Yes," he said, resting his hands on his hips.   
I shrugged. "If that's the case, then I'd better be the one giving you a cross-bar and not the other way round."

Snufkin thought for a moment. "But it won't be a surprise if I have to give you directions."

"Oh, it's a surprise, is it?"

"Yep. You won't have a clue where we're going."

I paused. I gestured at myself. And then at him. He stared down at his skinny little legs and arms, eyebrows furrowed for a moment. "Maybe we should take the bus instead."

We did indeed take the bus. I had to swing home again and grab my bus pass, but soon enough we were both back at that kip of a bus stop and chatting away about this and that. He and I played Sweet and Sour on the bus over. Ladies generally waved back uncertainly whenever we waved at them and smiled, but they always looked really confused. Some old guy gave me the finger. Which made us both laugh. We linked arms together and held our hands in our laps. He stepped on the top of my shoe and I stepped on his. He leaned in and whispered things to me when we were alone in the compartment.   
"How's your leg?" he said, touching my thigh very lightly. Snufkin and I climbed over a wall yesterday and I banged it really hard on the concrete. The bruise is small but it's sore as hell and feels like there's a lot more hurting under the surface. That sounds like some kind of metaphor but my body's just a pussy. 

"Doesn't hurt," I said, shrugging. "I don't know, little scrapes and bruises always make me feel adventurous. Like I'm getting out there, you know?"

He smiled at me. I swear whenever he does that my heart grows ten sizes. Like that stupid Grinch movie. "You're silly. Oh, I just know you'll like this place. It also sells Nepali food, one meal a day."

"Just one? Like a daily special?"

"Yeah, a little. It has ice-cream, too."

"I love ice-cream."

"I know."

We got off the bus in town and took a bit of a hike through the alleys and paths until we reached the tea bar in question. The sign was a bit busted. But there were flyers and posters all across the windows in different languages and a long-hair cat looking at us through the glass. Snufkin brought me inside and it smelled like candles. We gave the cat a scratch and walked up to the counter. They were selling some sort of bean stew. The lady behind the counter was very thin, and had very messy black hair down to her waist, tied together with an unholy amount of bobbins. She smiled at us and said, "Hello, Snufkin. Good to see you."

"Hullo, Salome," said Snufkin. He leaned his elbows on the counter and nodded in my direction. "This is Moomin."

I waved awkwardly. The lady- Salome- straightened her back and gave me an inquisitive smile. "I see! Is this the dreamy fellow you've spoken to me about?"

Snufkin went red. I giggled like a stupid schoolgirl and squinted up at the tea menu. I don't really drink tea and they were selling all sorts of drinks I'd never even heard of so I just asked for an ice-cream. They only had two flavours- vanilla or mint- I chose mint. Mint is so good. And a dragonfruit soda. Snufkin ordered something weird in a different language. He and Salome are friends, I think. He must go there often. They started to speak together in Swedish which left me hanging about a little awkwardly until we got our stuff and sat down at the tables down the back. They had colourful cushions on the seats and there were no windows, only lamps. Snufkin and I shared the ice-cream. He fed me and himself, seemingly taking great enjoyment in watching me lean in and clank my teeth against the spoon in his hand. I tried some of his tea but I didn't like it. It tasted awful. 

He cupped his hands over the mug. I watched him chew at his lip for a minute, staring down at the dark liquid. I finished my soda in the meantime. Snufkin looked up at me, and started to chew at the hangnail on his thumb. He said, "You can keep a secret, can't you?"

I don't even know how many secrets I've kept with this guy. I've lost count. I nodded anyway and we regarded each other for a second.   
"Do you-" Snufkin brought his thumb down and frowned at the blood he had drawn with his teeth. "Do you know why I missed so much school last year?"

I had wondered why. So many times. Every time I saw him in Music during our last few classes of the year. Every time he squints at a missing dog poster in the streets like it hurts to read. Or those passive-aggressive labels on his cigarette boxes. I just never knew how to ask.  
I figured he wanted to tell me then, so I just shook my head and bumped his ankle under the table very gently. 

"I went away," Snufkin muttered. "November, year before last."

"You went away?"

"Yeah. I left home. I packed my things, got up, didn't think of ever coming back. Didn't say where I was going, either, I never told a soul."

I watched him carefully. His voice was very quiet, almost shy. His hands were twisting in his lap so I couldn't reach over and take them.   
"Where did you go?"

Snufkin shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I just... went. Far down the country, I guess, because I felt like I had been walking and taking train after train for days. But they found me, eventually."

"Who?"

"The police."

"Were you in trouble?"

He looked up at me, smiling slightly. "Not with the law! I was only fifteen, I was a missing person. I guess I was in trouble with my parents."

"I'd say so. What made you run away?"

Snufkin paused. "I... I can't really explain it. The house that I live in, there's so many rooms, and people, and stuff, and so many memories inside of it, it's all..." He slapped his wrists together fretfully. "Convoluted. Everything's so twisted together. It's like I couldn't see anything with all the layers of haze and sound, and- oh, I don't know. This probably isn't making any sense."

"No, no, I think I get it."

He looked up at me. Sadly.  
"I didn't think anyone would notice. I've never been close to anybody before I met you."

And then he opened his mouth again to say something, even taking a breath- but instead he paused, and looked down at his mug again. Away from me. I placed my hand on the table. "Were you going to say something?"

He shook his head. 

 

We had peas for dinner later this evening. Pappa wasn't there. I love peas.

\- Moomintroll


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeuuuiyyy this chapter has some RISKQUAY stuff in it and if you do not wanna read that its the very last segment after the star stay safe guise

11th July 1999  
Sunday

This is what's relatively new in my life:  
1\. Snufkin and I have gone vegetarian. That means no more marshmallows. Or Swedish Fish. Sad.  
2\. I'm growing out my hair. It tickles the back of my neck constantly, but I like how it looks.  
3\. Pappa says we need a new television and computer. I agree. He also said he'll buy me a PDA for Christmas if I want one.  
4\. I'm really into museums right now. There's a big general one in town and another smaller one that I haven't been to on the outskirts. I went back to the taxidermy museum yesterday by myself and collected a bunch of the information booklets. They're still in my bag.

And I've been going on a lot of dates. Both the night kind and the day kind. Snufkin brings me out to all these new places everyday. I don't know how on earth he knows so many different diners.  
On Wednesday we met up with some of his half-friends from other schools and we all went bowling at 8PM. They're all older than us by a few years, some in college, which is so cool. Snufkin knows them from links and hotwiring. I remember there was Thingumy, Bob, Wimsy, Edward and this other guy called Brisk. I thought it was a stupid nickname but he's twenty-two and a buff ice hockey coach so I said nothing.  
The bowling was so fun. The alley was full of purple-lights and silly graphics, and it played that one Whigfield song over and over again. We were the only people there besides the staff. Everything smelled like pizza.  
Snufkin's older friends are a fun bunch. Wimsy is really funny. He stinks and wears those American raccoon hats. Edward is quiet, 6"4 and just as wide. He and Brisk don't like each other and it's really evident. Thingumy and Bob are planning on eloping. Turns out Bob used to go to my old school! She pinched my cheek and patted my head, said I was 'very cute', and that Snufkin and I were a sweet couple. Snufkin tried to stand straight and look taller. I tried not to tease him about it.  
When we started the game, Wimsy set his nickname as "knob-muncher" in the little computer thing and Brisk pushed me forward for the first go. I've only gone bowling once before in my life and that was for my 8th birthday party. But I still did an okay job. I got four strikes. Snufkin is really awful and he kept throwing it into the side-gutter things. For goofs I did the thing in movies where you press behind the other person and hold their hand over the ball to "help". They all whistled at that. Edward was the best and got almost every strike. Brisk started getting edgy because he wasn't doing as well. He was an asshole about it, actually. But Ed got us pizza afterwards so all's good.

"Did you know that every slice of pizza has about three spoonfuls of warm oil in it?" said Brisk, when we were all sitting by the river after the game. He was holding up a slice of margherita by the red sky. We had all been lying together on the grass and flicking bits of rubbish into the water, talking about nothing interesting.

"Nobody cares," said Wimsy.

"A fat bastard like you should," said Brisk, almost angrily. Wimsy just patted his stomach and shoved a whole folded slice into his mouth.

"How's this school year been for you, Snufkin?" Thingumy said suddenly. She was combing Bob's orange hair in her lap. Snufkin wriggled beside me.  
"All good. First few months were pretty bad. I still get pushed around a lot but it got better after Moomin moved into our year."

"Oh? What's the story with that?"

Snufkin gave me a little nod. I blinked at the sky. "Uh- our old house up North got flooded pretty bad two years ago, so it got really damaged and expensive. Plus my parents wanted to move somewhere warmer. So I got set up in Snufkin's school. We met at the bus stop."

"Cuties!" said Wimsy, obnoxiously.  
I laughed. I didn't think the rest was all that interesting but they all really seemed to want to know all the juicy parts so Snufkin and I explained our getting-together. We told them all about the mitching and the sleepovers and Italy. Thingumy thought that was just so romantic.  
"Imagine!" she sighed, sounding like an old poet. "Realizing your love on the Italian coast. Kissing by a water fountain. Sharing a bed. Wonderful."

"It was just a school trip," I said, but I was smiling. I think Snufkin was really embarrassed by it all. But he took hold of my hand over the shitty grass by the concrete and just gave me the sweetest smile. It was just full of love, something so real, I could barely control myself. All I wanted to do was get him to roll over me and give him the kiss of his life. Too bad I didn't.

"So what year are you two going into now?" said Brisk.

Snufkin explained about being held back. They all nodded thoughtfully. Edward whistled sadly. He said, "That sucks, man. Are you alright? I mean, after all that happened last year? The police were involved and everything."

"I'm fine," said Snufkin, quickly. "I'm older now. I was too young to know what to do back then. It's not all bad, though, because the classes are getting mixed up this year and Moomin and I might get lumped together."

I forgot about that. It made me feel cheerful for half a second before remembering what Edward had said, and what Snufkin had told me at the tea-bar.  
"You won't do that again, will you? Leave?" I said quietly, turning my head to look at him. Snufkin glanced at me, and for a moment I think I saw something flash in his eyes. He said, without missing a beat, "Of course I will."

I stared at him. The others stopped talking. Wimsy sat up and gave him a frown that read something incredulous. "You're not serious, Snufkin?"

Snufkin nodded. "I'm serious. I was gonna do it at the start of the month, but something cropped up."

"Snuff!" Bob exclaimed. She looked pretty scandalised. "You'll get busted again!"

"Yeah, wait another year," said Brisk. "When you're eighteen, man."

This whole time I just watched him.  
"You were going to go?" I whispered. Snufkin looked back at me, and this time his expression was harder than it usually was. He said, very quietly, "I was going to tell you about it sooner. Alone. But things happen, I guess. I would have never gone without telling you. I love you."

I squeezed his hand. I felt thrilled at his last sentence. But I was also really scared. And kind of mad. What the hell was he thinking? Was he just going to throw a rock at my window in the night, shout 'Cheerio!' and be off?

I thought I was going to cry. The elation of the love story we shared with the others just disintegrated. It was like all of that didn't really matter. If he actually meant it, Snufkin admitted he was pretty much fine with leaving everything behind, including me. I don't know. That's probably not what he meant. But Snufkin is hard to read sometimes.  
I think he knew I was hurt. Because soon after he stood up and said he was going to go home. We said goodbye to the others and left, down the road past the bowling alley and towards the bus stop. Then Snufkin stopped behind the building of the cinema, where there was a bunch of trees, and I stood beside him while he rummaged around in his bag. "Hang on," he muttered. "Just getting to find my bus pass."  
Snufkin pulled it out. And then he stood close to me, staring up, full eye-contact. He looked almost close to tears. I've never seen him cry in my life. It made me want to cry, too. So I did.

I probably looked really ugly, because I've looked in the mirror after crying before and my face goes all red and I look like I have no eyebrows. But Snufkin reached up and wiped my eyes, really gently. He said, "I'm sorry. Don't cry, Moomin. I wasn't going to go. Not without telling you."

"I love you," I said. No, I probably wailed it. Jesus.

Snufkin's face creased up for half a second. He slid his hands into mine and kissed my knuckes. "I love you too. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry. I- I'm sorry, it was all such a stupid idea. I can't leave you. I couldn't."

"Please don't leave me."

"I..." Snufkin paused. Which was probably unintentional, but it felt like a stab to the heart. He just sighed and pulled me into a hug. And while I cried like a stupid baby into his shoulder he gave me kisses on my neck and my ear and whispered, "I won't. I won't go."

 

13th July 1999  
Tuesday

This day was WILD. I'm writing this the next morning. Get a load of this.  
So, I had forgotten all about my birthday promise. Snufkin showed up to my house in the morning with a plastic ziploc bag in his pocket. He said 'hi' to Pappa, who had opened the door to him, and then we hugged each other on the stairs. Pappa just gave us an exasperated look and walked back into the kitchen in his slippers.  
Snufkin kissed me quickly on the mouth and said, "I have something for you. Let's go upstairs."

We scampered up to my bedroom. I could tell he was really excited and it was rubbing off on me. I shut the door behind us and he crowded me there, which was funny, because I'm much taller than he is. But still. Snufkin grinned and gave me another hug, and this time he did a giddy little jump. I laughed into his hair and asked him what was going on. Snufkin pulled the plastic bag out of his pocket and showed it to me. I knew pretty much exactly what they were.

"Oh! Brownies, obviously."

He nodded. "Yeah. Happy birthday, my sweetheart."

I pushed him away, smiling. "Shut up."

We sat on the bed together and he slid open the zip, pulling one out. It looked pretty normal. No nuts. He was a good baker. I said, "How many do you need to get high?"

And he looked at me, a bit incredulously. I think he keeps forgetting I don't know anything about this sort of thing. He's always checking my face to see if I'm joking. "Well, for you, I'll give half at most."

"Half?"

"Yes? If I give you a whole one you'll be stuck in bed for a few hours. I know I was." Snufkin shook his head and blew out a regretful sigh. "I was way too scrawny for the amount I ate my first time. Never again."

I decided not to ask. Snufkin broke off half of the brownie in his hand and gave it to me, but not before holding it back a second to shove me under quick scrutiny. "Do you want it?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Your dad is downstairs."

"We'll just go out somewhere."

He smiled. "You want to wander around stoned?"

That made me laugh. He gave it to me anyway and I tried it. It tasted absolutely awful. I almost gagged, but managed to swallow it anyway. Snufkin ate his half and a little more without any bother. He patted my shoulder and gave me a manly nod. "Well done. Now we'll go out before it kicks in."

I felt all jittery and nervous but in the insanely excited sort of way. I wanted to kiss him but I was worried about the horrible taste in our mouths so I didn't. But we did hold hands on the way down the stairs. That's always a win.  
I shouted down the hall into the kitchen that I was going out for a walk, and Pappa only raised his coffee mug in reply.

When we were out of the house Snufkin pulled me past the gate down the road to his house. He said, "Just a minute, let's go over to mine. We have pineapple juice in the fridge."  
Pineapple juice is our thing. No juice is as good as pineapple. I figured today was gonna be good. He pulled the carton out when we stopped in his kitchen and we brought it upstairs into Mymble's room. I was going to ask why we were in there but he read my mind and explained anyway.

"She's gone to Portugal with her friends," he said excitedly, creeping over to her dresser and pulling out the little drawers. I walked over to him and observed the collection of perfume bottles beside her mirror. Snufkin pulled out a tiny little stick of red eyeliner. He leaned in to look at himself in the looking glass and squinted. "I don't usually do this," he said, raising the liner to his left eye. "But this is your birthday party, after all. We should look good."

I didn't know it was my birthday party, but it was funny so I rolled with it anyway. I watched him drag the pencil over and out so that he had two long lines of red along his brown eyes. It didn't look half bad. In fact, it looked really cool. Then he brandished it in my direction and I took a generous step backwards.

"You gotta look good!" he said, grinning. The liner waved. I stared at it.

"I have sensitive skin," I said, stupidly. What a lame thing to say. Snufkin only laughed. "It'll be fine. I swear."

I didn't want any makeup. But I did let him paint my nails blue. Just because it was my birthday party.

 

On the bus, while Snufkin was talking about something, everything started to get brighter and fuzzier. The fluorescent lights overhead in the compartment were shaking and rattling, and usually I don't like to look at them, but in that moment I couldn't stop staring. It glowed. The light itself reminded me of Snufkin's brace flare.  
And then he said something beside me that made me smile. I don't remember what it was. But it turned into a giggle. And then suddenly we were both grabbing hold of each other's arms and bending ourselves over the second seats over, laughing silently. I remember closing my eyes and gasping because I couldn't even look at him without bursting into an absolute fit. He just looked so weird.  
I don't know what stop we got off, but I remember linking arms with Snufkin and trying to keep straight faces. The pains in my feet and back just going away. It's a feeling I can't describe. But we strolled around for a while and stared at the pigeons and I crashed into a metal sheet on the pavement.  
We reached a water fountain. I said, "Snufkin," and it sounded so stupid I had to clap a hand over my mouth. Snufkin leaned in and stared at me. "Yeah?"

It was a struggle to get the words out. I don't know why; it was just so stupid, I had to laugh. I said, "Are you hungry?"

And he screwed his eyes shut through the giggles and nodded. "Yeah!"

So we found ourselves at a cheesy off-brand American diner. It was full of neon signs. I watched them flash, on and off, on and off, smelled all the burgers and hotdogs. Snufkin pulled a red-and-white striped straw from the little containers next to the salt and pepper and twirled it round and round, which completely threw me for a loop. I couldn't tell if the straw was getting longer or moving from side to side. The stripes were rolling to the left, but the straw itself was edging to the right. Snufkin and I stared at it avidly. It was so freaky.  
Then when we got the menu I had to read it aloud because Snufkin couldn't make heads or tails of it. But he kept making me laugh. Looking back, I must have been yelling out the food names as loud as possible because people started to stare at us, if they weren't staring anyway.

The waitress came over. Her badge shone in the sun from the window and it lit up Snufkin's right eye. His pupils were blown like crazy. He said, in a shaky voice, "Garlic mushrooms, please."  
And I had to bite my hand to stop the giggles bursting from my stomach. Everything he did was so funny. Every time we made eye contact we had to look away if we didn't want to have a collective meltdown. I forgot what I wanted to order so I just asked for a water instead. The waitress clearly knew we were high off our minds and she was really cool about it. She just waited for me patiently and tried with all her might not to smile. Well, whoever you are, lady, I give you my props and thanks. You have nice hands. And a symetrical face.

Anyway, when the garlic mushrooms arrived, they were scalding hot but it didn't even seem to matter. I took one and put it in his mouth. Snufkin did the same, vice versa. He bit down on my fingers without hurting me. I pushed my legs up against his under the table. Everything felt so weird. It was like, heightened, something like that. My depth perception was entirely fucked up.  
So when we were finished with the diner we somehow made it to the town park. We sat down by the lake, where there were thousands of golden spider webs over the water, and I kissed him in the grass. It was the strangest thing. Everything was almost better. I felt his hands all over me, my neck, my arms, under my shirt, over my back and chest. He accidentally tickled me at some point and we had to stop because I was laughing so hard. I would have collapsed and probably crushed him. He's so thin. I could feel every rib under his sweater.  
"Moomin," he said after a while, voice shaking with giggles. He pushed my hands away and lay back beside him, staring at the sky through the tree leaves. He said, "I have dreams about you."

And I said, "Yeah, so do I. Not about me. About you."

He closed his eyes and smiled at the trees, and his hand clapped over my shoulder. "You know what I mean."

"I know."

 

*

 

That evening I watched Snufkin brushing his teeth in his bathroom. I was spending the night. We were still kind of baked.  
He stood in nothing but a t-shirt and his old checkered boxers, whereas I was still wearing my clothes. I figured I should go and get dressed, and he knew I was watching him in the mirror, but for some reason I didn't want to move. He bent over the sink and said, "You brought your pyjamas, right?"

"Yeah, I grabbed them from my house a while ago."

"Cool." Snufkin turned around and looked at me, and there was something in his expeession that I couldn't really read. He folded his thin arms over each other and chewed the skin on his lip. "Are you okay? Today was a little full-on, I'm guessing."

I nodded. "Yeah. I enjoyed it. A lot."

He smiled. "I'm glad. I love you."

"I love you too."

And when we were in bed, Snufkin crawled in beside me the way I often do with him. He felt his hands over me, carefully, lightly, like little spiders all over my body. He kissed me, and it wasn't full of that half-lucid fervour from our afternoon in the park. He knew what he was doing. I didn't. I just sort of held him and let him do whatever. He was soft, and patient, and he asked me in a whisper if I would let him touch me. And I really love him. So, so much. So I said yes.  
Snufkin trailed his hand down and pushed his palm gently between my legs, moving it in such a way that made me feel on fire. I really will not get into the details in case somebody finds this journal. Honestly I would throw myself off a bridge if anybody knew about this. Also, it's between him and me. I'll keep my memory in my head. And he'll keep his memory in his head.  
I just feel really happy now. What happened last week doesn't matter, and Snufkin loves me, and I love him. We lifted our level of intimacy together just that bit higher and I feel like I can probably die in peace now.

\- Moomintroll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sry for any mistakes its 2am and i gotta be up at 6 LOL are eye pee


	13. Chapter 13

16th July 1999  
Friday

Our car broke down. Pappa is really annoyed about it. I have a bad headache from all of his ranting in the kitchen.

 

23rd July 1999  
Friday

Took the car to get the tires fixed. Was accosted by a few tanned men in gloves and cargo shorts at the garage. They started to crank the car up while I was still inside and I nearly screamed. The employees jogged in and out of the dirty shop-front with great rubber tires under their arms and one of them chatted to Pappa, who stood outside with his arms crossed. I remember there was a flyer for the circus pasted to the yellow window.

 

25th July 1999  
Sunday

Don't have much to write about. Snufkin and I spend most of our time lying in the grass and talking about music and stuff. He loves Elton John (for some reason). Unfortunately the flu has been doing the rounds in his house and he passed it onto me.  
Imagine having the flu during the summer. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I can't BREATHE! I really need to get my shots done but I've always been scared of doctors. I remember breaking my leg seven years ago and having to get an x-ray. I saw all of the yellow caution signs and the radioactive warnings and it totally freaked me out. And a few years ago when I was getting my braces done, I had to take another x-ray, and Pappa had to forcibly push me into the little room at the dentist's office. I don't know, I just don't want to get zapped! I grew up thinking radiation would give me polio but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works.

 

4th August 1999  
Wednesday

Snufkin's gone to Sweden with his family. I was nervous to see him go. I think at this point I have seperation anxiety.  
Without him I am bored. Constantly. He said he would send me a letter.

 

5th August 1999  
Thursday

Got the letter! I'll stick it in here.

'Hi Moomin.  
My Mom's family is nice. They don't speak any English. None of them recognised me because the last time we visited I was five. I am absolutely obsessed with Daim bars and I'll bring some back for you.  
I hope you're feeling better.  
\- Snufkin'

And in the envelope he enclosed a postcard of some sort of medieval painting and a few pressed daisies.

 

18th August 1999  
Wednesday

Snufkin came back yesterday. Our car is STILL kind of busted. We have to keep driving it or else it stops working.  
Mamma has suddenly decided that she wants to become a foster mother and has been doing a lot of reading on the computer and at the library where she works. She's talking about taking courses and stuff. I don't know how to feel about that. I guess I understand that she's always wanted more kids, but our house isn't very big and I can't imagine living like Snufkin who has to deal with ten other people everyday. I suppose that's why he spends so much time with me. He says I'm quiet and smart and that he loves how we don't even have to talk to each other, just sit and enjoy one another's company. He'll give me a swollen head one of these days.  
Still, I say we wait a bit until we're used to the new house. We only moved in at the beginning of the year, really. I can't believe we're halfway through August.

 

30th August 1999  
Monday

First day of school. I broke the car window. We were driving in the morning and the window was rolled down. So I grab the edge of it and try to adjust myself in my seat and the thing comes off in my hand. I must be stronger than I think. Pappa rarely shouts but he did yell something very obscene. Which I'm sure he could have gotten reported for.  
Anyway, Snufkin and I ended up in the same class, which was good- but so did Billy. So I guess that means I can't put my hand up to answer questions anymore. Not that it matters, because this new school handles my grade differently. We still do exams at the end of the year, but instead of working hard and learning things we'll be going on a bunch of trips and go through a lot of holistic crap to figure out what kind of jobs we want in the future. Every two months or so everybody in my year will take out a week to find work and intern at different places, like schools or offices and stuff.  
Have to sleep now, I'm so tired all over.

 

3rd September 1999  
Friday

It's Snufkin's birthday in TEN DAYS!!!

 

5th September 1999  
Sunday

I need to start putting the sleeves back on my records. I keep forgetting. Now my copy of The Lion and the Cobra is absolutely ruined.  
Other than that I don't have anything good to write. School is pretty boring. Snufkin and I can't get too friendly, which sucks. All he can do is pat my leg under the table or pass me a note tucked into hook of his pen.  
All the teachers talk about is how to make eye contact with interviewers and how to properly shake hands with somebody.

 

13th September 1999  
Monday

It was Snufkin's birthday today!  
I set my alarm for 5AM last night. I was going to set it for six, but I decided it would be romantic if we could watch the sunrise together. And it was a good thing that I did because when I opened my window I saw a cat squat down to pee on the shirt I had left out on the roof. It was drying overnight because I went swimming in it yesterday. I made an ungodly noise trying to shoo it off before the shirt was ruined and I set off the motion detecting lights in our backyard.  
Nobody woke up, though, so that was good. I felt really tired and almost didn't get up; but then I remembered 'Oh wait! The love of your life is seventeen in the morning! Quit being lazy!' ... So I got dressed pretty quickly and tiptoed downstairs to grab the tortilla chips out of the cupboard. I also grabbed the cherry punnet and the box of grapes in our fridge. Very quietly.

When I was ready I went through the backdoor into our garden. The walls have this strange kind of wooden hatching on it for the ivy to grow, and it's actually really handy for climbing. It's only just strong enough to hold me so I climbed the wall quickly and scooted along the edge to the over side of my house.  
I suppose Snufkin is much better at sneaking up his neighbour's wall to peer inside the window. I tried my best. I nearly fell off his roof because the tiles were so slippy but I eventually managed to reach his bedroom window and knock on it quietly. There was no response the first time. Then I knocked louder. And he was there, a little groggy-looking. We waved at each other. He opened the window from the inside and reached his hand out to grab mine.  
"Hi," I said, smiling. "Happy birthday. Do you want to come with me? I'm going to the beach."

Snufkin stuck his whole upper body out of the window and kissed me. Usually I would have been very enthusiastic about this. But like I said, the tiles were slippy. So I pulled away gently and smoothed my hand over the hair around his temple. "I'll fall and die if I spend another second on this roof, man. Go get dressed and I'll meet you outside your gates."

Snufkin nodded. "Okay."

And so I sat on his wall for a few minutes before I heard something fall against the gravel around his garden and he was jogging over to me, waving. He looked tired, but really pleased. I think he liked how our roles were being reversed. It's usually him who climbs up to my window in the dark. Anyway, he came over to me and we started to walk off in the direction of the beach. We didn't say much. The path was long. But we did eventually get there. And when we did he and I took our shoes and socks off and we went into the water. The waves were so loud and strong. The sky was dark blue and the orange lights of town in the distance looked pretty cool. I wish I had the camera. Snufkin waded into the water without caring if his clothes got wet. He turned around to me and hopped over the ripples.  
"Come in further!"

"I don't know," I said, watching the waves rise above his thighs and crash around my ankles. "There's no lifeguard. The current is really strong."

He held his hands out. "Please?"

I shrugged and took hold of them. And then we slowly walked through the freezing seawater until it came up to our waists. I was laughing because neither of us had thought to bring a towel. We had to walk home pretty soaked. Snufkin actually fell right in and completely submerged himself at some point. I pulled him out and carried him back to the sand, one arm under his legs, the other under his back. And he just kind of flopped there and laughed like it was funny. He said, "I'm fine, let's go back in!"

I said, "Absolutely not. You're not drowning on your birthday. That's just sad."

And I dropped us into the beachgrass so that we wouldn't get sandier than we already were. Snufkin crawled out of my arms and lay down beside me. I lay down, too. We looked up at the sky. It was turning red with the sunrise. He took my hand. "Thank you. For this birthday present."

"No problem. I brought a picnic." I grabbed my bag and pulled out the goods. Snufkin took all of the cherries. I took all of the grapes. Tortilla chips give me acid reflux if I eat them after 9PM but I ate them anyway. It was worth it.  
At some point Snufkin pulled a cherry stem from his mouth and showed it to me. It was tied in a knot. It was so cool. Can you believe some people can do that? Tie cherry stems in knots with their mouths? I asked him to teach me how to do it and he just laughed at me. I don't know why. He's a legend at card tricks and he's also got a tarot deck under his mattress so I'm expect it's a magician secret or something.

I crawled through his window when we eventually got home and he got dressed into dry clothes. Then we played his Yellow Submarine record. In the earliest of hours! Nobody woke up, or rather cared too much. Which was good. My mom loves that record. Snufkin likes When I'm Sixty Four. He said it's sweet. I said I would mend all of the fuses in his future house. And then he said he would never live in a house.

"Why?" I said, playing with the edge of a snipped tag on his bedsheets.

Snufkin wrinkled his nose. "Too big. Too many things. Makes me feel itchy. I'll probably live in a tent when I'm older."

I laughed at him. He gave me an indignant look. "You're joking."

"I'm not," he said. "I won't live in a house."

 

The next morning I woke up hogging all of the bedcovers. Snufkin was lying at the other side of the bed looking very cold. I wrapped them round him and gave him a kiss to say sorry. He wanted more but I had to go back to my own room in my own house before my parents would find me gone and freak out.  
In the middle of school we figured that we wouldn't learn anything interesting that afternoon so we called it a day and fucked off at lunch-time. Snufkin and I took the bus all the way to the end of its route and visited a little seaside tourist shop. He took a green apple from the free fruit crate and showed me how to find out the first letter of my future spouse's name.  
We stood beside the mosaic mirrors at the end of the shop and he stood in front of me, holding the apple out. He twisted the stem over and over again, counting out all the letters of the alphabet, and when the stem started to break off he sped up his counting until he reached the letter M. It made us both laugh. I looked at him in all of the surrounding mirrors and felt a funny feeling in my chest. I don't know how I ever dealt with myself  before meeting him.

\- Moomintroll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eddie take the money and run  
> Im working off all of my own experiences in this fic its the ultimate teen lifestyle u cant call urself an alex g fan unless u listen to his brand new song at 4am on the beach with your special homie


	14. Chapter 14

19th September 1999  
Sunday

Attendance is becoming a huge problem in my year. Because we don't do anything in class anymore, and nobody is bothering to show up. Including me. I've found that I'm really excellent at faking my mother's signature.   
Snufkin doesn't show up to school at all nowadays. I don't mind. Billy is rarely in either, so at least we get a bit of peace and I can space out whenever I like. I like to draw the projectors and the symbols on the walls and the music teacher. She didn't come to school for a while after the year started, and I heard a rumour that it was because her house got robbed. If Morran looked sad before she's even sadder now. I felt so bad about it that I cried and told my mom. I think more of her hair is grey than it had been before the summer.   
I've also been feeling bad because Sniff e-mailed me again and said that he kinda missed me. And I guess I miss him too. Mamma said we should arrange to meet up again but it's awkward trying to organize everything and he doesn't know I have a boyfriend. But I think even my grandparents know now because my grandma called me a few nights ago and said that she loved me in a weird sort of way. I don't know for sure if she was just being strange or if I could tell something was up. She published a new cookbook and we got a copy in the mail. It's mostly cakes and stuff. I bet Snufkin would be interested. 

Speaking of which, I don't think anybody's seen Snufkin in a few days, but it's because he's got a chest infection. He called me today and I saw him for the first time in like a week! Yeah, I know we're pretty much conjoined twins these days but he said he didn't want to infect me again. Which I understand.   
Anyway, phone rang in the hall at around 9PM. And I was too lazy to get up from the couch because I was listening to Pappa's Carmina Burana record. But nobody went to pick up so I eventually stood and answered before it stopped ringing. "Hello, who's speaking?"

"Hope Street Sperm Bank," said Snufkin on the other end. I immediately felt really happy. I even laughed a little bit too. I think that's what's great about being in love. 

"Hi," I replied, leaning into the phone table. "How are you? Are you any better?"

"Oh, you know..." there was a pause and a rustling noise. I can only assume he shrugged and forgot that I couldn't see him through the phone. "I'm in town right now. This phone box smells pretty bad."

I could very vividly imagine the smell of a town phone box. "Ugh. Why are you out so late?"

"It's only eight!"

"It's nine, actually," I said, glancing at my parents' old pendulum torsion clock on the mantelpiece. "Please stay safe."

"Well, I'm fine. I was wondering if you wanted to go to Five Guys with me. I have more brownies."

"No way. Not on a school night."

"But you don't have to go in tomorrow."

"Maybe I want to."

Snufkin sighed uncharacteristically. "Okay. But I miss you. And I think you're pretty. And I want to go into the pound shop so I can buy you a huge bag of Skittles."

"Very cute, but I won't fall for your flattery," I said, even though I was falling for his flattery. He keeps his compliments very non-verbal, if you can understand what I mean. He doesn't say much like this often. And I think I kind of wish he would, outside of a joke. But it doesn't matter. I know he really means it. I do like Skittles.   
"Fine. But I don't know what time I have to be back by."

I had to be back by eleven! You'd think I'm twelve instead of sixteen, two years from being an adult. I said that to Mamma and she covered her ears like I had said a swear. But I agreed to come back by then. That's not what ended up happening. Snufkin and I met up at his mom's shop and he took me further into town where all the bars are. And there was something going on outside one of the buildings.   
A small crowd of people were getting in and showing their hands to the bouncers. We stopped one of the girls and she showed us her hand. There was a black stamp at the back, to let her into the concert.   
"The band's not well-known," she explained to me when I asked why they didn't have tickets instead. She had a weird expression on her face the whole time, like she was squinting to read a fine print on my face. "This way is easier. I can give you a pen and you can copy it, if you want."  
That's what we did. I'm just as good at forging stamps as I am at forging signatures. I copied it onto Snufkin's hand and then mine, and we went inside with the girl. Her name was Jumble. She was kind of weird, but was nice enough to offer us drinks from the bar. I don't like alchohol. I don't think Snufkin will eat or drink anything that doesn't taste good. But he did take a sip of hers and said it was really nice. It was blue liquid.   
The band was actually really good. Everybody there wasn't as crazy as I imagine some band fans can be. The songs weren't too insane and the sound was amazing. Snufkin had to go into the bathroom at some point for a long time and he came back looking better. I held his hand and Jumble said that she thought we looked like the people you see in movies. I don't think I'll forget that. 

I came back at one. Mamma was pretty angry with me. She said that she had been worried sick. And I cried again because I felt like an asshole.   
I don't think I like going out every day and breaking my house rules. Snufkin said something a while back like forgetting to do the dishes when I'm sixteen won't matter when I'm thirty. Because I worry an awful lot about getting into trouble. I'm getting lazy about it now because this school year is really easy so far. But I used to get so worked up that I'd almost cry. And he said I shouldn't worry so much about things that don't matter, like getting to school on time. But I hear from the teachers that punctuality is practise for the real world. So I'm not sure what to believe.   
Being a bad son and taking drugs and going out to random concerts is fun sometimes I guess. I had a point with this whole rant but I'm really tired now and I want to go to sleep. So bye. School tomorrow. Snufkin's right, I don't feel like going. 

 

20th September 1999  
Monday

Didn't go to school today. If only. I was going to, but then when Snufkin and I were on the bus I told him I was going to skip. He just shrugged and said, "That's fair. Have a good time."

"I'll buy you Maryland cookies," I said, and then I watched him get off the bus. He waved at me as we drove away. 

I went to the taxidermy museum again. I really do love all those fish in their alchohol tanks. But I had a bad feeling the whole time I was there. And I was right. Because when I got off at the bus stop on our street, Snufkin's sister was sitting outside on the wall of their front garden. It was My. She was drinking something bright green and sugary.   
She said to me, "Where were you?"

I was confused. "What?"

"He's in there," she replied, gesturing over her shoulder. The front door was open. I looked at her, still confused.

"I know," I said, slowly. "He's back from school, right?"

She stared at me. "Were you in today?"

I shook my head. "Oh. I see." My nodded her head slowly, a look of dawning comprehension on her pinched face. She almost smiled, but she didn't. "He got expelled."

I felt all my organs turn to mush inside my body. Everything dropped. I would have dropped my bag if it was strapped over my shoulder. "What?"

She just stuck her thumb over her shoulder. I pushed the gate open and hurried inside of their house. I knocked on the door and ran up the stairs before anybody could stop me. I don't think anyone was there, because their van was gone and none of the kids were around. But when I knocked again on Snufkin's bedroom door he answered clearly and calmly.  
I opened it. He was there, on his hands and knees, counting things out on the carpet. There was a bunch of seaglass, skins, a few tapes, a tiny metal tin, his harmonica, a jade ring, a shark tooth, and a pack of playing cards. And his bag was resting by the bed. It looked full. I stared at his back and all the stuff on the floor. 

"Snufkin."

He turned around. He was crying. I don't know how I felt when I saw that his eyes were completely red and burned from the tears. His face was shiny. 

"I heard," was all I could say. 

Snufkin looked back at the pile. "Somebody told. I was called into the principal's office and they said I had to show them my bag. They found cigarettes and told me that I wasn't making any effort. So now I'm gone. My parents don't even know yet."

It's weird how things can be okay one minute, and everything completely swept into the sky the next. That's how I felt. I felt like I was dropping through the ceiling. 

"Moomin, I'm leaving."

"No."

"I have to."

"Please don't!"

He stood up and looked at me again. I looked at him. He was really crying, right in front of me. It was scary.  
I started to cry, too. And I couldn't stop. Not even when he put his arms around me and squeezed, not even when he rocked me, not even when be said that he was sorry over and over again. He said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to. I have to go."

"I'm going with you."  
I was crying into his shoulder. It was wet. I couldn't breathe because my nose was getting blocked. Snufkin pushed me gently away and looked at me, his face trying to figure out if I was joking or not. "No, you're not."

"Yes I am! You can't stop me!"

"What will your parents say?" He suddenly sounded really angry. I don't think I've ever heard him raise his voice before. It scared me but I didn't care. I was bigger than him. I stood over him and said, "I'm nearly an adult, they can't stop me any more than you can!"

"You're not- Moomin! You can't!"

That made me start to cry again. Because he sounded scared. And he was hopeful, too. I could hear it in his voice. And he hugged me again and I hugged him back. I had to hold him or else he would slip through the floorboards and I would lose him forever. And I didn't think I could handle that. He couldn't, either.   
He whispered, in my ear, "I don't want you to go. I don't want you to get in trouble."

"Who cares about that," I said. 

"I do. You're my best friend. I've never met anybody who makes me feel the way you do, Moomin. I look at you and I want to give you everything. And I would never forgive myself if I took away all that you have now. You have a family that cares about you.  
I have nothing more to lose and that's why I can't stay here anymore."

"But what about me?"   
I didn't think he heard me because I said it so quietly. But Snufkin pulled me in tighter, and he kissed me then. It wasn't pleasant because I was crying so much and thought it was to say goodbye. But when he pulled away, he said, "Moomin. I love you. And now that I know what it's like to love someone as much as I love you, and to have you love me back, I know it's going to be so hard to say goodbye."

"Then don't. Take me with you."

He paused. I saw him chew the inside of his mouth and stare at the wall behind me. I could almost hear the cogs working in his head.   
"Okay. Fine."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

 

And so I ran back to my house. And my parents were eating dinner inside. It hurt. They asked me how my day at school was. I told them we were learning about self-presentation. They both smiled at me and they said that it was all about the natural charm, and that I would never have to worry about that. And it hurt even more, then.   
I went upstairs and I shoved everything that I needed into my schoolbag. I thought about the list that Snorkmaiden had given me over the phone so long ago. I had to hurry because Snufkin's parents were going to come home soon.   
And then when I was finished, I called to Mamma and Pappa in the kitchen that I was going to Snufkin's to give him today's homework, and that I would be back in a second. They gave me the thumbs up. Said goodbye.   
Then I went out the door and I didn't come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IN THE HOUSE THEY WERE CALLIN OUT HIS NAME ALL NIGHT, TAKING TURNS ON THE BED THROWING BOTTLES THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF THE HOME ON HOPE STREET


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR MISTAKES I DONT HAVE TIME TO REED

21st September 1999  
Tuesday

I'm happy now. 

When he and I left his house on Monday we took the bikes down to the outskirts again. And there was a cul de sac somewhere in the middle of all those yellow houses. At the very bottom Snufkin stopped his bike and left it in the gutter to march up to the last house. I left my bike down by his own. There were dirty barbie dolls and trikes and cigarette butts in the grass. Snufkin and I went up to the blue front door and he knocked three times. 

"Why are we here?" I whispered, but he said nothing. The door opened, and Whomper was there. It must have been his house. I heard his dog barking but he just pushed it away with his foot. "Hey, man."

"Hi," said Snufkin. "Do you have my money?"

"Uh..." Whomper's face tightened. "I... I don't have all of it; I've got-"

"As much as you can give me. I'm in a hurry."

"Okay, yeah. It's upstairs. Just- just hang on a minute." The door closed again. Snufkin and I were left to wait at the threshold until he came back down again. Before then I took his hand uncertainly and ran my thumb over his knuckles. "Are we okay?"

Snufkin blinked, eyes forward. "Yeah. I just figured we might as well collect this money now. We'll need it."

"I brought some. I have late birthday money left."

"So do I," he said. "I didn't spend a penny because I knew we'd have to use it like this."

I squeezed his hand. "We."

"Yeah."

The door opened again. We pulled our hands away quickly. Whomper stuck his shaggy head out the door again and handed over two notes. A fifty and a twenty. "I swear I'll have the rest of it soon. I'm getting paid next week-"

"That's fine," said Snufkin, stuffing the money in his pocket. "Thanks. See ya."

And then we were off again. We pulled our bikes up and continued on, out of the cul de sac, down the coast road to the harbour. But this time I followed him up a sharp turn in the street before we could reach any docks. We cycled past a long row of colourful little shops and empty football pitches until we came to a little gathering of brick houses. They were pretty trashy. There were still Christmas decorations up on some of the walls. Snufkin stopped us next to the very last house up by the desolate supermarket and he wheeled it up to the door this time. I followed him in. He knocked on the door, same as last time.   
A girl opened up. I didn't recognise her, but she looked our age if not younger. She had white hair. "Hi, Snuff. What's up?"

"Hey Susanna," he said, tonelessly. "You have my money?"

She paused. "About that- I used some of it to-"

"It doesn't matter, I'll take as much as you can give me."

This time she invited us in. The walls had plates and stitch hangings and old photographs. There was a stair-lift, too. It didn't look like a house that a girl out age would live in. I felt scared then. For the first time after leaving. I thought about my parents and their house. They were sitting there now, drinking coffee. Thinking about things. I'm thinking about things too. I hugged myself in that hall and I hated the smell and the feel of it all and the water-stains in the ceiling.  
The girl came back down and gave Snufkin a twenty. "Like I said, I kind of-"

"It's okay," he interrupted. "Thanks anyway. Bye."

We did this again, twice. Two different homes. One was another girl, Nana. She let us in too. She gave a lot of money. He showed it to me- three fifties. I didn't ask why she owed him so much.   
The next was Wimsy's house. His mom opened the door, which made both of us panic just a bit. I could tell because his whole body tightened up beside me and his hand twitched. But she was kind, I guess. And she called Wimsy's name twice before he came up and Snufkin asked very quietly if he had the money he owed. Wimsy kind of scratched his chin and said something about pals and patience, but then Snufkin said he had been waiting three months. 

"I know, I know," said Wimsy, uncomfortably. "I get it. But I'm kind of in a rough spot at the moment."

"Whatever," Snufkin muttered, turning to walk away. "See you."

"Hey, come on, don't get so mad!" Wimsy called after him. I was dithering on the patio. Snufkin gave me a look as if to tell me to hurry up. Wimsy only patted my shoulder (which made me jump, momentarily) and said, "Why? Why are you in such a hurry all of a sudden?"

But Snufkin only stared at him. And he looked at me. And I looked at both of them. And then Wimsy kind of furrowed his brow. "Wait. I know what's going on."

"Come on, Moomin," said Snufkin. He picked up my bike and leaned it against the stone wall. I walked out from the front lawn and took it from him. 

"Wait! I'll give you something! It's won't be much-" Wimsy ran back inside his house and we waited for several moments. Snufkin's forehead was creased and he was wringing his hands over his chest. "This was a mistake. His mom saw us now. I shouldn't have come, of course he wouldn't have a penny on him."

But then he came out with a brown paper bag. And he gave it to me, which I took, but I didn't look inside. He gestured at it.   
"It's, um. Just food. And a tenner. I don't have anything else. I'm sorry, Snufkin. Please stay safe."

Snufkin took the bag from me and looked inside. Then he went up to him. Wimsy looked kind of sweaty. They were ridiculous in comparison to size, I remember. Yet they pulled each other into a one-armed hug, and for some reason I felt like there was something in there. They must have known each other before at some point.   
"Thanks, man," said Snufkin, and his voice was muffled in Wimsy's sweater.   
"Don't die," he replied. He kind of gave me a strange look over Snufkin's shoulder, like he was trying to think of something to say to me. But he didn't. And I was grateful, because I wouldn't know what to say to him. 

 

Snufkin told me what we were gonna do while we were waiting for the lights to change. He grabbed hold of the cross-button to stop himself from losing balance on his bike and said,   
"We'll take the train."

"Yeah?" I brushed a stray cobweb from my chain.

"Yeah." The lights stayed red. "I know there's a campsite we can stay in, down the country."

"What did you pack?"

Snufkin glanced at his bag. He had brought the knapsack type thing. It looked pretty full to me. "Just clothes and stuff. Bus pass. Passport, too."

"Passport?" 

I must have said it pretty incredulously, because Snufkin gave me a sort of weird look. "Yeah. For identification."

"You're a drug dealer!"

"Not anymore. We're not doing that now. Trust me, Moomin."

I tried to. But he was just being so vague about everything. I wondered if he really did have any kind of plan, which I know now that he doesn't. Not really. And I didn't ask any more questions because I didn't want him to get mad and give me up. I was determined to be helpful.  
So for the first day we kept on cycling until it was almost dark. And outside of the train station, we sold our bikes to strangers for more money. Two twenties. Snufkin told me we weren't gonna need them. And I watched the boys run off with their finds. I suppose we were lucky, because they could have easily just taken them without paying.   
We used that money to buy our train tickets. He talked to the guy behind the desk while I looked out the window. And then we sat in the metal seats beside the tracks. The seats were wet, and it smelled really awful in there. There was graffiti everwhere and people I couldn't see in the shadows. It was cold, too, so I took my coat off and gave it to Snufkin. 

And the train ride was silent.   
It was so very dark outside, the whole way through, having it be around eleven or so. I cried a bit then because I knew my parents would probably be worried. But not too much. 

"What's wrong?" came his voice from beside me. Our shoulders touched. I looked around at him and wiped my eyes hurriedly. 

"Nothing."

"Sure." Snufkin patted my leg. "Come on. Don't cry. You wanna play criss-cross?"

We played criss-cross for half an hour. And then I was tired. So I leaned against my seat uncomfortably and closed my eyes. And when I eventually went to sleep my neck was turned in such a way that hurt me even in my dreams.  
Lucidity is strange. I try and hold onto it when it happens, but it's like there's far too many layers of sleep over top of it, that it slips away from me the moment I stop concentrating. I used to be able to do it when I was younger, but not anymore. Anyway, I didn't dream of anything I can really remember. But Snufkin's voice found its way inside of it. He was there, standing beside me; and he said, "I shouldn't have let you come with me."

 

When I woke up, the train had stopped. Snufkin gently pulled on my sleeve and we both stood up, slinging the bags around our shoulders. It was still dark outside. I suppose I only got about an hour's sleep. He gave me a packet of crackers and we shared them on our way out of the doors, onto the platform, through the gates. It took me a minute to slip my ticket through the slot, but I made it eventually. 

"Are you tired?" he said, when we walked onto the pavement outside of the station. The sodium lights stained everything an ugly shade of orange. I shook my head. 

"I'm fine. Are you?"

"I'm okay." Snufkin took my hand. That made me feel better. We walked down the road where there was a fork. One road lead down a path of shops, and the other a path of trees growing over like some kind of leafy bridge. Snufkin took me down the shops. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and I put my hood up. Which felt stupid, but I suppose he knows what he's doing. He pulled me inside an all-nighter and we bought stuff like croissants and snap peas and bananas and popcorn. And pineapple juice. He put loads of snap peas in the basket because we both love them. He opened one of the packets and gave me a few before we even paid for it.   
"Thank you," I said, in a silly sort of voice down the milk aisle. Snufkin looked at me in the round mirror above the cartons and smiled.   
The shop-keeper looked tired. We bought our stuff and left. And down the road there was nobody, just the lights and the path in front of us. I stopped concentrating on where we were going. 

"What will you do on the first day of owning your own house?" said Snufkin, after a while. 

I paused. "Sit in it, I guess."

"No, I mean, will you celebrate?"

"Maybe." We walked past a dent in the pavement. We were moving past houses now, with no lights in the windows. "I'll boil an egg. And stick a pizza in the oven."

"What kind of pizza?"

"Uh... cheese and mushroom."

"And barbecue sauce."

"Ew." I was smiling. "You'll be there. And I'll make you play scrabble."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. That's my idea of a celebration."

"Joy. Well, when I get a busted old caravan, and I'm an accomplished musician, we'll sit in the bed and we'll eat loads of Skittles. And I'll boil an egg, too. We'll boil loads of eggs. Then it'll be like that Björk music video."

"You mean the one where she rolls the eggs all over her face?"

"Yes. Then I'll make SWEET love to you after the goddamned eggs."

"Snufkin! Stop being weird!"

Then we were both laughing. He took my arm and we swayed as we walked like two old drunks. "I'm dead serious. Maybe even when we set up the tent. It'll be like we just moved into a new home."

"You think so?"

"I do. Will you live with me, Moomin? Until I can afford a busted old caravan?"

His hand had found the back of my head then, and I let him card his fingers through my hair a bit before replying. We stopped in the path and looked at each other. "I will. Even if this is a terrible idea."

Snufkin shrugged. "You're not wrong."

I know he wanted to kiss me then, but I wanted to save it for later. I pulled him on through the path and we kept on walking, quiet now, until the concrete turned into dirt and gravel and there were hedges all around- next to us, for the most part. I ran my fingers through the brambles. The thorns poked, but they didn't hurt. Eventually Snufkin stopped over a metal gate and he swung his bag over it. "We'll sleep here for the night, okay? Behind the hedge."

I wasn't sure at first. But the yellow field was empty, so I followed him over and I lay down next to him in the hay. We curled up under my coat, behind the bush where nobody could see.   
I felt pretty tired then. Snufkin had his eyes closed, I think. But then he said something again.   
"Am I going too fast for you?"

I blinked. "No. What do you mean?"

"In all of this. Us. I'm sorry for weirding you out with the advances."

"You didn't weird me out. I was just joking."

"Oh."

I reached out and lightly touched the top of his eyelid. "I promise I will let you love me in your caravan when we can pay for one."

"Okay." Snufkin exhaled sharply out of his nose. It was a poorly disguised laugh. "You think we'll still be together by then?"

"I think so. And maybe if there's a storm, or something like that, you'll come over to my house. And we'll watch concert tapes. Maybe you could serenade me. No, we'll have a converted room in the attic, yeah?"

"Yeah?"

"And there'll be a fan, a chandelier, and a piano too. And a bathroom, but there'll be no ceiling. So when I'm taking a shower you can play a song for me and we'll sing along like we're in seperate rooms."

He was laughing at me. "Moomin, that's really specific."

"I have specific visions," I said, softly. "And they all have some sort of you inside of them."

He didn't say anything after that. But I knew that he was pleased. He put his arms around me and we fell asleep in the grass with our foreheads almost touching. 

 

It must have been around 6 or 7 when we woke again. The sun always wakes me up because my eyes are stupidly sensitive. My chest and legs ached with that tired feeling after getting a bad night's sleep, and when I sat up I realised I was hogging the coat. I hurriedly covered Snufkin's body with it and stood up, brushing the grass off my back.   
The sky was white. Snufkin himself was still asleep, and I let him be for a bit before crouching down again and touching his shoulder.   
"Snuff. Wake up."

He stirred pretty quickly. "What?"

"Do you wanna go, or do you want to sleep in for a bit more?"  
Snufkin shook his head and got up, combing his hair with his fingers, giving me back my coat. I insisted that he wore it. He gave in and put it on, a little reluctantly. However I know for a fact that he loves to wear my clothes. And that he does quite often. We swapped clothes a few months back, and almost everything he owned actually fit me because he doesn't like to wear anything that isn't XL. I can understand that. 

Anyway, we continued down that path by the fields until I could see the coast. We both held each other excitedly and pointed. We had the custard doughnuts that Wimsy gave us for breakfast. They were kind of nasty but still good in that weird way.   
When we reached the campsite, he and I were pretty stoked. I saw it from the hill. It was way down at the bottom, down a tarmac road and a bit of sad fencing, and the road lead to the check-in where there was a small hostel and an area to shower in. All around it there was green. There were some tents already, but not many. And in the very middle, beyond the couple of cars and tents, there was a huge lake. With a wooden jetty out in the centre. 

"Snufkin," I said, staring. "I will most definitely live here."

"I knew you'd like it. Come on, then."

We walked down the hill towards the hostel. I wondered how Snufkin even knew about this place. He told me that Thingumy and Bob had stayed for a week, and they had sent a very long letter detailing all of the things to do. I wondered about that. 

Inside of the hostel check-in there was a sign up for the prices to stay. To camp, it was a fiver a night for each person. To stay in the rooms, it was seven. Snufkin had a tent. There were little tables and stuff with kingfisher identification papers and wildlife club sign-ins. I sat on the couch while Snufkin paid for us to stay. Two weeks, I think, is what he said outright. I was really excited. We were going to live together, in this quaint little spot on the coast! Even if it was cheap, and even if the lingering fear of persecution still weighed on me.   
Unfortunately we chose to pitch the tent in an area full of stones. I had to put my coat down for us to sleep on. I didn't think to bring a blanket, but thankfully Snufkin has at least an ounce of sense and brought his couch throw. We folded it out to fit in the floor of the tent and then went out again to explore the area.   
There were blackberry brambles everywhere. A phone box. A cabin full of fishing equipment. A man sitting outside of his campervan, smoking. The lake was down a gravel path. We walked down together and took a look. Over the banks there was another piece of grooved wood, where somebody had left their blue flipflops. Snufkin took off his shoes and socks and took them for himself. 

"Be careful," I said, watching him wade in. He decided to take off his trousers and throw them at me. I caught them and scowled. 

He took off his shirt, too, and suddenly he was very white against the black water if not for his underwear and the jade bracelet around his wrist. "I want to go and sit on the jetty!"

"You'll definitely drown and I won't save you."

"Oh, lighten up. I know how to paddle."

"Yes, but do you know how to breathe underwater? Please don't. It's too deep."

Snufkin went in anyway. Up to his neck.   
And to be petty I dropped his trousers into the water. He wasn't pleased with me, but I don't care. 

In the tent that night something amazing happened.  
We were laying out all of the stuff that we packed. I packed clothes, obviously, but then a lot of stuff from our medical box in the bathroom. Stuff like plasters and bandages and medical tape. We both brought scissors and soap. But then Snufkin pulled something from the depths of his bag and I had to ask what they were.   
"Ink and needle," he replied, holding up this pencil contraption with a pin pushed into the eraser. He had wrapped a bunch of thread around the base. 

"What's it for?"

Snufkin held his hand out and closed every finger except for his index. Just under the last knuckle there was a tiny star, inked into the skin. I stared at it. "Is that real?"

"Yeah," he said, wiggling it. "You ever seen a poke tattoo before?"

"No, but I want one."

Snufkin raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Will you do one on me?"

"Are you sure? It's permanent."

"I'm aware." I stuck out my hand, and he took it gingerly. He traced his thumb over the skin between my index finger and my thumb, and I decided that's where I wanted mine to be. I pointed at it. "There."

"That's a very visible area."

"I know."

"It hurts, Moomin..."

"I know!"

So Snufkin only shrugged. And he said, "If you really want one..."   
He cleaned the area with some of the tea-tree oil I brought. It would have been better if it was alchohol, he said, but we didn't have any. And then with a biro pen he drew a tiny flower into my skin. There were seven petals. I loved it.   
And with every dip and push of the tiny needle I felt like I was falling in love all over again. Snufkin took my hand in his and he held me so gently. He apologized for hurting me every five minutes in a shy voice, and squeezed my knuckles with the pads of his fingers.

When it was done he rubbed my hand again with the oil and tissues. And then he drew on his own hand, in the same spot, the same flower. I stared. "Are you doing one too?"

He nodded. "Then we'll be the same. And if anybody comes between us, I can look at the back of my hand and it'll look like you, like you're right beside me."

 

22nd September 1999  
Wednesday

Today we woke up in the tent and I realised that it was Wednesday. And that I'd have to call my parents soon.   
I talked to Snufkin about it after we paid for a bath. In the hostel showers, there's a dingy little tub too, for some reason. And we both had the bright idea to take one together. 

I got in after him. I admit the water was good. I always used to fill the bath way too hot, so it was a nice change not having to slowly stick my ankles and wrists in one at a time. And with both of us in the tub the water came right up to the brim. Snufkin let a bit down the drain so it wouldn't spill, and I watched him move around before settling down again.   
He watched me too. It was nice; letting each other just look, to see everything there is to see. It wasn't the first time I've seen him bare, and I suppose I won't lie and say I didn't feel horribly self-conscious. Even if I knew he never cared that I'm fat. He likes me that way, I think. He says it feels good when he hugs me and that he likes to curl up beside me when we sleep over.   
Snufkin is thin. And I see it in his chest when he stretches, and all of the ribs poke out. I think he's thinner than usual, but that might just be because he isn't wearing any baggy clothes. I looked at his legs and his shoulders and his collar and his hands. I watched him lean over and pick up the soap from the counter. 

"How do you feel about all of this?" he said, looking up at me, and then back at the soap. 

"Weird," I said. "But I'm not scared anymore."

"You were scared?"

"Yeah, a little."

Snufkin put the soap down and took my right hand in his. Our healing tattoos lined up perfectly. He touched them together so gently I thought I would break if he made any sudden movements. "Well, I'm glad it's better now. You shouldn't be scared. I love you."

"I love you, too."

It's true when I say that. I know everybody tells us that you can't truly fall in love at my age. But I have. I'm crying when I write this and it's not because I'm sad. It's because I love him so much. And it's true.

 

"I think I'd better call my parents, Snufkin."

He looked up at me. His arms were crossed, and now his forehead creased, slightly. "Okay."

"I won't tell them where I am. I just need them to know I'm alright."

"I get it."

"You do?"

"I do. I won't be calling mine, though. And if your parents ask to speak to me you must say no."

I nodded my head. I took the soap from the counter and started to fidget with it. I only half-heartedly washed my arms and knees but that was about it.   
We talked for the next while about nothing interesting. I told him about my childhood crush on Olivia Newton-John. And he told me he used to pick his nose when he was a kid. That made me laugh.   
Snufkin was watching me in a strange sort of way. I tried to just stare at the wall behind him, because I was starting to feel a little weird. 

He said, "You look nice."

Which made me go very red. And when I blush like that I know my eyebrows disappear. So I tried not to blush. But you can never really stop it, I find.   
"Be quiet."

\- Moomintroll


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they get quite frisky in this chapter be warned;;;;;; nothing really happens but if u just dont want to read moomin sulks so hard he hurts his shoulder and is bitter because snufkin made fun of him for eating unripe bananas

25th September 1999  
Friday

I hate flip-flops. They always squeak when I walk. They make ugly marks on my feet and the skin goes all sweaty and smooth underneath the plastic straps. And they're FUCKING UNCOMFORTABLE!

Snufkin and I had a stupid argument and now I'm sitting where they keep the boats by the lake. I've been here all day, listening to the cicadas. I'm sulking in one of the boats now and I don't care if somebody yells at me.  
The sky is the 8PM kind of colour. Blue, I guess. There's bats flying all around me and I didn't realise until one landed in the reeds. I thought they were just clumsy birds. The wood under my shorts is all slimy and its seeping straight through to my legs, which is disgusting. I think it may have rained here recently.

Yesterday, when I tried to call my parents, they didn't answer the phone. Halfway in through those deafening beeps I shoved the receiver back on the little hook and went out of the booth because my nerves were gone. I really don't want to hear them shout at me. I'm not ready yet.  
And when I came back to the tent I was crying. Snufkin was eating cold soup from the tin (what?) and he looked up at me as I was climbing inside.

"What's wrong now? Did you call them?"

"No," I said, and I was crying hard. Not the way I do when I can stop it or when I'm pretending. I lay down next to him on the blankets, and the tears were drowning me.  
"They didn't answer."

"Oh." I don't think he knew what to say. He just sat there with the soup in his hand and he didn't move.  
"Don't cry."

That's why I can't cry in front of him. Because he always says that. And then I feel guilty, and scared that if I'm sad in any way he'll tell me to go home. I was really angry for a second, but it went away as soon as it came to me.  
"I have to cry sometimes, Snufkin. Just let me."

He paused again. "Do you have to call them?"

Then I was mad again. I yelled at him. "Nevermind! Christ!"

"Don't shout at me."

"I'm not!"

"Yes you are. Go outside and calm down."

I sat up and turned around so we were facing each other. He had since put the tin down and was sitting cross-legged, both hands on his knees. And he had the strangest look on his face- absolutely nothing there. Nothing to see.  
Even if there were tears on my face I know I was glaring at him.  
"You wish I wasn't here. You wish you had left me back home. I heard you say it. You thought I was sleeping on the train."

He still didn't move. "Teenagers leave home all the time. Your parents can't stop you, but your seperation anxiety can."

"I don't have seperation anxiety!"

"Then what is this?" Snufkin raised his eyebrows and gestured at me. "You're a mess! You've been in tears ever since we left!"

"That's not true!"

"Stop shouting at me, Moomin. Get over yourself. If you can't handle a week out of town then you should go home."

I knew it. He wants me to go home. This made me start to cry again. I didn't care at the time. Or maybe I did. I don't know.

"Moomin," he mumbled. "I said go outside."

"Just say you don't want me here. I'll go and I'll never see you again."

"Don't be ridiculous."

It made me really mad that he was so calm. He wasn't angry or sad like I was. Mad to the point of wanting to do something. I don't know what it was, but I didn't.  
"Fuck you. I'm not your bird anymore. Bye."

Then I kicked myself out of the tent. I don't know how to describe it but it was like he didn't care, or that any kind of feeling he showed before now had been fake. Which isn't true. I was just emotional. And stupid. I can't believe I said that.

I've been thinking about it a lot now, all day.  
I went in the lake in my clothes because I didn't want to go back and get my swimming stuff. I swallowed a bunch of black water. It probably had loads of bugs and shit in it.  
About an hour in I started to pet all of the silt and the watergrass and got my hands all dirty. And then I half-dived and scratched my shoulder on the rocks. It hurts so much. My t-shirt is very red on my left side. Maybe Snufkin will feel sorry when he sees it.  
I think he was right, though. He didn't get angry or shout back at me. I'm embarrassed now obviously because he was so calm and I was that, a mess. Like he said.  
He's right! Fuck!

I unpeeled my t-shirt just now. The scratch isn't even deep, it's just very big. And the skin around it is torn up on the inside. The blood is really close to the surface. I suppose that's what a bruise is, just deeper down. Somebody once told me blood is blue until it hits oxygen. And that always made sense to me because the veins in my wrists are really prominent and purple. But now I know that isn't true. Light just shines through skin in a weird way.  
I wish blood was blue. It's my favourite colour.

 

LATER ON- 12AM PROBABLY I'M NOT SURE

I stopped sulking and went to apologise. Snufkin was still in the tent. Probably was all day, avoiding me. I don't blame him.  
I kicked my stupid flip flops off outside and crawled in. He was lying in there, on his stomach, head in his arms. And he only looked up in a shy way when I unzipped. He didn't move.

"Hi," I said, gruffly. "I'm an idiot."

"You could say that," he replied, very quietly.

"I'm sorry for breaking up. I'm really sorry, I was angry. I didn't mean it."

"I know."

I hesitated. "Will you forgive me?"  
What a cartoony thing to say. Snufkin shifted around on his belly before blinking at his own hand. He nodded.

"I forgive you."

Then I went to lie down in front of him so that our heads were close together. And smoothing his hair down with my fingers, I whispered, "Thank you. But I have to let it out, you know I do. If I don't cry I'll be worse off."

Snufkin wasn't making eye contact, but he did push his forehead against mine, gently. "I know. I'm sorry."  
He said it so sadly. In that moment I almost heard my heart break right inside of me. My hand moved to hold his, and he took mine just as quickly.

"Snufkin."

"Yes?"

I was about to say something, but I decided not to say it. Instead I kissed him. And he kissed me. Not the way we usually do, where it's chaste and it doesn't really last long and we start to laugh at each other after a while. But the way he does when I know he wants something more out of it.  
I heard him sigh into my mouth and the fingers of his free hand fluttered over my my back and under my shirt. But I pulled away from him before he could do much else.

"Are you okay?" Snufkin said, quickly. He was looking right at me then.

"Yeah," I said. "Just- not now."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's fine. Can I just kiss you?"

"Please."

So we did. For a while. A long time, actually. And in that time he did touch me again but he was careful about it.  
But then he touched my bad shoulder under my jacket. I almost yelled again but I managed to keep it to a gasp. "Ow!"

"Sorry- did I-"

At that point I wasn't lying down anymore and he was sitting on my legs (it's okay, he's light as a feather), so I just patted his side and shucked my jacket off. Snufkin saw the red (brown?) stain and his eyes were suddenly very big and very round. "Moomin!"

"I was in the lake," I said, and I watched him lift the fabric off the wound very carefully. He peered under the collar of my t-shirt. "I dived in and scratched it off a rock."

"You poor thing," he mumbled. His knee was digging into my stomach but I said nothing. Snufkin's hands went to the hem of my shirt and they took hold of it. "I'm taking this off."

"Woah! No, don't-"

"I need to see it! It looks horrible!"

"But-" My voice cracked, which was just so stupidly funny. We both couldn't help grinning. I tried not to laugh when I spoke. "You can just pull the sleeve up."

Unrelated, but sleeve should be sleef. Like roof and rooves. I think I've written about this before. I hate this language.

"I've seen it all before," said Snufkin, primly. "If it gets infected we'll have to go get it checked out. And we can't afford that."

"I guess." I still didn't want to take it off but I let him anyway. He got out of my lap and promptly tossed the shirt behind him before squinting at the scratch.  
"Oh, my sweetheart. Does it hurt?"

"No," I lied. I was smiling at the petname. It was stupid, but it still made me feel fuzzy. "It's fine, Snufkin. I just grazed it."

"This is not a graze, you sorry bastard. Wait a second and let me get the medical stuff."

He did. I watched him crawl over to the bag and stick his hands in to rummage around. He was wearing odd socks. One red, one blue with grey stripes. I don't know why I'm writing about this. He just looked good. Snufkin looks good all the time I think. This is very unrelated. I really don't want to write about the bit where he attacks my shoulder with the antiseptic wipes because the memory stings and choice words were exchanged and it's a much nicer experience writing about the boy I love.  
When he pulls his trousers up it's like his legs are glowing orange. His leg hair is very thick and red. So is the stuff around his inside elbows and his pits. And his jaw. He's just quite hairy I guess. This is something I really do like about him. I'm not sure if that's weird or not. I'll be sad when he shaves his head again.

When he was sticking a bandage over my shoulder I saw the ginger hairs on his upper lip up-close. He saw me staring and smiled. I saw his crooked teeth then. The elastics, too. That's how you know he's really happy, if you can see his brace elastics.

"I love you," I mumbled.

"Okay," he said, laughing. He smoothed the medical tape over the bandage and patted it gently. "There you go."

"You're beautiful."

"Thanks. It's late now, we should hit the sack."

We tried to sleep. We lay beside each other talking for a while. He asked me where I slept last night and laughed when I told him about the boats. I deserve that! I'm so glad he forgives me. I really am. I was so, so stupid for what I said the other day. It really is a wonder that he hasn't kicked me out.  
And after we had talked for a while he rolled close to me and pressed himself against my side over the ground. I held his hand when he rested it over my middle.

"I don't want to fight again," he whispered. "But you will have to let some things go if you want to stay with me. I'm gonna be moving around a lot. We can't stay here forever."

"I know," I said, even if I didn't. "Should I send a letter instead of calling?"

"Calling is safer."

"Okay." I don't know if letters can be traced or if calls are recorded or something like that. In some kind of way I wished that my parents didn't mind too much, whether I disappeared for a while. I know I have a lovely mom and dad. And that they're probably looking for me. Maybe I'm on the side of a milk carton now. I don't think Snufkin would be.

He kissed me then on the side of my mouth. "Is your shoulder still painful?"

"No. Do you drink soup or do you eat soup?"

Snufkin smiled. "What?"

"It's bothering me. Soup is a liquid. You drink it, from a spoon or whatever. You don't eat a smoothie. Which is basically the same as soup."

"It doesn't matter."

I sighed and brought him close to me under the blankets. He squirmed around until he was lying directly on me and had his hands folded over my sternum. "Are you tired at all? Even a little bit?"

"Not really," I said.

That was the right thing to say, because he leaned in then to kiss me under my jaw. "I think," Snufkin said, inbetween. "That soup is not what you should think about right now."

"What should I think about, then?"

"Me," he replied, shyly. "Only me."

"Oh, that's easy. Watch."  
I brought my hands up to the sides of his face and I kissed him again. Properly. And he liked this. He wriggled around a bit over me, adjusting. His braces banged against my teeth at some point which made both of us wince. But it didn't matter.  
I don't know why I don't ever get tired of doing this. I suppose I dreamed about it a lot more than how I admitted earlier on in this journal. Before we were together. Every night I'd lie in bed with one leg over the covers and I'd think about what it would feel like to kiss him like this, where I feel his nervous hands and his tongue and his hair in my face.  
I didn't ever think I'd get it. Not really.

But now I am. And he's squirming around a bit. When he had to resurface I asked him why he was moving around so much.

"I'm..." Snufkin hesitated, and I felt his breath on my cheek. "Nevermind. Sorry."

"Just relax. You're in good hands."  
I did jazz hands over our faces. He snorted and thumped his head down on my chest.

"Yeah, I wish those good hands would _do_ something!"

"Do what?"

He lifted his head again. He was smiling. "Touch me!"

"Oh!" I felt myself going red.  
I know he wants me to do second-base type stuff quite often but I'm always kind of reluctant. I don't know why. It's not that I don't want to. I think about it a lot. It'd be weird if I didn't.  
But something stops me every time. I guess I'm just scared I'll do something wrong. Snufkin's done it to me before I suppose. He would be better at it. He's been in relationships before, but I haven't. Not unless you count Snorkmaiden, which I don't really. We barely kissed each other.

I'm tired now, I don't to write anymore. My hand hurts. So does my shoulder. I'm reading back on my old entries and I want to give my old self a shake.

Yes! You love him! Admit it!

 

26th September 1999  
Saturday

I have a mosquito bite on the inside of my thigh and it's really annoying me. Snufkin made fun of me for inspecting it. I cried again because I stepped on a snail on the jetty. I was wearing my grey converse instead of my wretched flip flops.

 

27th September 1999  
Sunday

We went shopping today for microwave food. There's a microwave in the hostel that you can use for free.  
It was very difficult trying to find any vegetarian food but eventually we came across a chilli and these strange pizza baguettes and we bought loads of each. They were cheap. We also bought more fruit. I don't like bananas that are too ripe. Apparently green bananas are the absolute bane of society but I eat them anyway because I'm my own person and they aren't soft and horrible and they have a distinguished sharp taste.  
At least I leave out the apple core.

There's a pimple under my nose and it hurts when I smile. Snufkin said it's because I'm not eating properly. He has a lot of acne around his nose and chin so I'm going to go ahead and disregard what he said.

\- Moomintroll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tis but a scratch


	17. Chapter 17

Snufkin's Journal

28/9/99  
(A week and a day in)

Moomin told me he has decided to be braver.  
I am glad about that. I think I'm being a little too brave for the both of us and it's getting old. He and I were brushing our teeth in the hostel bathroom when he told me this. I heard him put down his toothbrush. I wasn't looking in the mirror.

Moomin is actually doing alright today, in terms of nerves. I remember at some point he would not drink warm water because it was "gross". Even if water gets warm as soon as it reaches your belly. That was stupid. But now he can open tins of baked beans (without any help) and acts like it's some great achievement.  
I can't help but smile when that happens. Because even if it annoys me a little I have to admit that it's endearing.

Okay I had another look at his shoulder just now and it's not good. Before I took the bandage off there had been a big yellow stain on the front, which is not a good sign. And it is weeping very badly now. Moomin must have rubbed something in it when he was cooling off his temper outside. I'm trying to patch it up as best I can but if it gets really infected then that'll be a whole lot of trouble. He might even have to go to a doctor's office.

If it comes to that I will send him back.

I'm okay too. My busted shoulder still hurts after all these years whenever the weather changes and it's been doing that a lot lately. I think it'll rain tomorrow. Dad always used to know when it was going to rain, so maybe I've inherited something. But I still that skating accident made me psychic.

 

Here is the next page. Moomin wants to write something in here now.

 _'Gravity is stored in the earth's core_  
Moomin + Snufkin  
I don't want to eat any more freaking beans'

 

29/9/99  
(No sign of any kingfishers)

It seems I only ever write in this thing if I'm worrying.  
Moomin just told me if I had been born four days earlier than I would have had the coolest birthday this year. I didn't understand why until he wrote down the date, 9/9/99. It's funny the way he notices those things. Or maybe that's what he's thinking about when he zones out on the blankets.

I went to the pharmacy today in the village and bought iodine patches. The green cross outside the shop was very beaten up, I remember. And the woman behind the till was old.  
Moomin was fascinated with the patches. He thought they smelled funny. I fixed up his shoulder. Hopefully it won't hurt too badly for much longer. I told him about my own shoulder, and he thought it was cool the way we were matching in some morbid kind of way.

We spend a lot of time in the tent. And he talks about how great it is that we're living together. And how we'll live together for a long time.

I feel like crying when he does that. Because we're not going to live together and I can't keep him with me any longer. I'm trying to write things down to make them real, because I know I won't do it if I ignore the problem like I always do.  
It's real and it'll happen.  
I will send Moomintroll home.

I've been stupid and selfish for bringing him along with me. He isn't suited for any of this. He cries when I leave him for more than an hour. He's kind of a picky eater. He called his mom and dad and they yelled at him over the phone in that little metal box over by the fishing cabin. I don't know why I said yes because Moomin is still only a little kid at heart.

Becoming so attached to him and letting him become attached to me was a stupid idea.  
I sound melodramatic. I can't help it.  
I will talk to him this evening.


	18. Chapter 18

2nd October 1999  
I think it's Saturday

It's easier now to sleep without a pillow, I think. I used to alway sleep with two. I know Snufkin only uses his own to kind of hold while he's sleeping, instead of putting it under his head like a normal person. And now he just holds me instead. Which I'm not opposed to. But it's still weird.   
I think Snufkin is brooding. I didn't see him around much yesterday, and that made me nervous. Like the sweaty kind of nervous. And when I found him playing his harmonica next to the boats in the evening, he was frowning at something over my shoulder. He wouldn't look me in the eye. 

He offered to buy me a pillow when we went to get some stuff in the local supermarket the other day. They weren't actually selling them but they were selling blankets that I could roll up and sleep over if I wanted to, but I said no. I don't know why. I was kind of nervous the whole time, because of the cameras.  
The shop was ages from our campsite anyway.   
We bought so much water and lemonade. We used to drink from the taps in the bathroom but I don't think it's safe for human consumption and I stopped doing it. Snufkin got kind of annoyed with me then I think but I Put My Foot Down.   
We also bought batteries and Pringles and a new lighter (because I put the old one in my pocket and forgot about it when we went swimming. That was the day when a mosquito landed on Snufkin's arm and it exploded when he flexed his muscles.)

Also, we went fishing!  
He and I went to the wide river together. That cheered me up. I've been feeling pretty down these days, and I think he has been too.   
We sat at the grassy banks on our grubby red picnic blanket and took our shirts off. All around us there were dead brambles and daisy leaves and twigs in the earth. There was some kind of well contraption over by the far side next to the field, where there were two large stone things and a water fountain pouring out of the side into the yellow foliage. It looked like a nice place to sit.   
Instead of rods and stuff Snufkin had this net type thing with a rope that he tied around my wrist. And everytime I threw it into the river he'd say, "Brilliant, that was a good cast."  
Surprisingly we caught a lot of fish this way. Silvery fat ones. He threw any fish that were too big or too special back into the water. We didn't have anywhere like an ice box to put them so Snufkin ran back to the campsite and brought back the plastic bag we use for our dirty clothes. 

"This is so weird," I said, watching him upend the net into the bag. The fish squirmed around sadly.   
Snufkin didn't answer. He only bent over the banks and stuck his head in the water. I watched him ruffle his swirly red hair for a few seconds with mild interest before he resurfaced and flicked his body back. He splashed me slightly.  
"Fuck!" he yelled, holding a hand over the side of his head. "I got water in my ear!"

"That wasn't smart," I said, disinterestedly. I had gone back to watching the fish suffocate. 

Snufkin wiped his wet hands grumpily on his binder and sat with his legs crossed. "I was too sleepy. I needed waking up. You could do with a shower, Moomin."

"Don't be mean." I sniffed myself anyway. He was right.

When we were done catching all the fish Snufkin and I lay on our bellies and he said something a little weird. Well. The thing itself wasn't weird. It was just kind of sudden. He said,   
"Moomin?"

I said, "Yeah?"

"I love you."

I smiled then.  
Maybe he isn't upset after all. And I'm just being twitchy. But it's still hard to tell. 

 

6th October 1999  
Wednesday

I don't get much time to write in this anymore.   
My shoulder's doing better after Snufkin tended to it. No more yellow goo.  
We're also sorting out our money now. The most of what we have now is strictly for emergencies, and the rest is for groceries and stuff like that. I keep wondering if we should be looking for jobs or something to support ourselves when the money goes. 

 

12th October 1999  
Thursday

I dyed my hair two days ago in the hostel bathroom too. It's black now. Snufkin helped me. The dye smelled absolutely awful. It came out of this tube and I thought we had bought the wrong thing at first because the paste was white. But then when we scrubbed it in it started to go black and that's when the smell hit us.   
At least it came with shampoo and stuff. It's so weird when I bend down and my hair gets in my eyes and I realise it's not white anymore. 

 

14th October 1999  
Saturday

I'm still thinking about Mamma and Pappa.  
Sometimes this new life together is fun and then suddenly it isn't. 

 

27th October 1999  
Wednesday

We aren't in the campsite anymore! We've been saving up a lot. I'm in a cosy bed right now. We're only staying in this B&B for a day but I've missed the indoors so much. Snufkin and I are temporarily eighteen.  
The walls are that weird Magnolia colour, kind of light orange. Or yellow. I don't know. I just asked Snufkin's opinion and he said it was beige, so immediately I'm discrediting that. There's a rug over the carpet which is really weird. It's brown and there's an intricate rose pattern in the middle, which I'm touching right now. It's kind of dusty. There's a weird stain on the side but I won't think about that.   
TV, too! Snufkin and I laid on the carpet and we watched Spongebob for HOURS. It was great.   
The bathroom is also good but there's a curtain that flows out and touches your back while you're taking a shit if the window's open.  
Lastly there's like, these weird holes in the walls, but not all the way. They're places to put candles I think. Romantic. The lady who owns the house has placed little porcelain angels there instead. 

 

28th October 1999  
Thursday

I looked at the clock in the hall. It's 3AM, so that means it's tomorrow. Thursday. I'm writing again even if my hands are shaking now.   
Snufkin's asleep at the other side of the room, on the floor. With his back against me. We had another argument. I'm sorry if the page is wavy here because I'm crying AGAIN. I'm a stupid fucking crybaby and that's why he wants me to go home. 

After the cartoon run was over and the adult TV started to show, he and I went to sit on the bed together. The news was on. They were talking about something to do with computers. The Millennium Bug, is what they said. I don't know. Snufkin laid himself back on the yellow sheets and he stared up the cracked ceiling. I did the same, for good measure. 

"You know," he said, slowly. "Letters are amazing when you think about it. Something that people have done for years and years. To write something down with your own pen and handwriting, something private or angry or lovesick or whatever- and then to fold it up and send it on its way, to find whoever it is you wanna talk to."  
He shifted around a bit. "I think about the journey quite a lot. How many different people touch the envelope before it gets to you, do you think?"

I folded my arms. "Billions. It'll probably get cooties on it, I reckon."

Snufkin smiled at that. "We should try it. Sending letters."

"Why? We'll be right here together. If you have something to say..." I rolled over just a bit so that I was closer to him. I was in a lovey, daring kind of mood, the kind that makes me feel confident. "Then you should just say it to me. In person."

Snufkin looked around at me, eyes floating from here to there. He was smiling too, but I noticed that it wasn't a happy smile. Or a secretive one. "Yeah. But we might not always be together."

My heart skipped then. "Don't say that, you'll make me melancholy.

"It's true." His smile dropped a little and he turned over, fully. His hands rested under his cheek, and his legs drew up to his chest. "Moomintroll. I... We need to talk. And I need you to be brave for me."

As soon as he said that, is when I started to panic a little. I can't help it. This always happens- if someone says 'we need to talk', and they're not specific about it straight away, I start to lose it. Right away I think I'm in trouble. And I usually am.   
"About what?"

"About..." He hesitated again. And then when he exhaled I felt his breath on my skin. "About us. You, being here. It's not working out."

Snufkin's voice was softer than I ever heard it before. It was a voice I wanted to curl up in, if only it didn't cut through me so harshly anyway. I tensed up on the bed and stared straight through him, thinking hard. "What?"

"It was a mistake to bring you. I'm saying it now, and I don't want to hurt you, Moomin, but it's the truth. You aren't ready to leave home."

"Yes I am," I said, almost automatically.

"No you aren't," Snufkin replied, sadly. "Don't lie to me. It isn't something you can help. You're either able, or you're not. And I don't think you are."

"Don't you want me here?"

He screwed his eyes shut. "I'm... I love you. So, so much. But for both our sakes I'm going to have to ask you to go back home."

A beat of silence. "You can't make me. You can't stop me coming with you."

Then Snufkin opened his eyes again, and now they were becoming red around the edges. "You're right. I can't."

And at that point I was getting angry again. I sat up on the bed and I knew I was going to say something mean. I didn't want to. So I just got up off onto the carpet and made my way into the hall, towards the bathroom. I locked myself inside and I started to cry.   
I know Snufkin regrets bringing me. And I know all I've done since leaving is cry and cry all the time, but right then in the bathroom it wasn't because I thought he was wrong. It was because he was right. I know I shouldn't be here.   
And I don't want to force myself along with him either. 

 

(LATER ON, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TIME  
IT'S PRETTY LATE)

Snufkin woke up. He kissed me and said he was sorry, over and over again. I didn't kiss him back. I pulled away and said nothing.


	19. Chapter 19

30th October 1999  
Saturday

Yesterday morning I packed in the house. Snufkin paid for another night. All of my arms and legs hurt now, and so does my head. I've had a pounding headache for the past day. I spent the whole afternoon yesterday sitting in the bathroom and counting out all of the pennies I had left in my wallet.   
I feel so stupidly guilty now because I didn't want to speak to Snufkin, even if I did really. He tried his best to talk to me in the evening, but then I went out and wandered about the town for a while.   
I didn't feel as frightened then of being caught I guess. Cus now it doesn't matter. And I have black hair. Most of the shops were kind of boarded up but there was one newsagents open and they had all their Halloween decorations up.   
I suppose now I'm gonna spend Halloween on the train. 

That's what he said to me today. He told me that if I should leave then I should take the train back, and that he would bring me to the station. 

Snufkin sat at the other end of the room, over by the old curtains. He was still wearing his pyjamas; with both legs at either side of his body. He said,  
"It's the one we got off at. You know it."

"Yes, I know the station you're talking about," I said, and I remember I said it so unkindly. I was sitting on the bed with my back to him. "I can find it on my own."

"Can you?"

Snufkin knew I didn't have a clue where it was. And I really hated that. It made me angry that I was so dependent, and that he wasn't. That's why we got into this stupid fight in the first place.   
"I can," I replied. "I don't need your help."

Then we didn't talk to each other.   
I got dressed. The weather was cold when I stuck my hand out of the window. My bag wasn't that heavy but every part of me was hurting so it felt like I had stuffed it with rocks.   
Snufkin came with me in the end. I don't know how he got me to agree with it but he left a note at the empty reception for the lady and we left without saying a word to anybody, even ourselves. 

And now we're here. I'm writing this on some knobbly old wall. The twigs in the shrub behind my back is sticking into my neck. And the stones hurt. The weather is cold.   
We're in this weird smaller town place. It's like that one near the hostel but the shops are all single-storey and the people sit outside with their feet in the gutter, staring at me.   
Snufkin's gone into the shop across the road. I guess I look a sight now because I've been crying again. And I'm scared, too. I don't really know where I am. I don't do well with names and directions. Even at home I only know places from how they look. From a visual perspective, or something like that.

My parents are angry with me. They'll shout at me when I come home. And my picture's probably in the paper.  
I'm in such terrible trouble. 

 

(LATER ON, 6PM)

I bought Subway to cheer myself up. I took the chicken out of the sandwich but it tasted empty and I don't know if I'm not a vegetarian anymore because the meat touched the bread and salad.   
We also bought a map. And I don't know what all the different lines on the page mean but the directions that people are giving to Snufkin kinda make some sense now. He asked the guy in the fishing shop and he was really nice about it. 

I also stepped on a slug. It was disgusting. I nearly cried but then a car nearly ran me over so I was frightened into moving on.

 

(LATER ON, 10PM)

We actually found the station!!! I'm waiting at the waiting place, I forget what you call it- platform, I think- It was behind a great glass building and a massive car park full of SUVs. There's a lot of paper signs telling me that there's CCTV up and running, and the bathrooms were closed outside of train boarding minutes because of "anti-social behaviour".  
Anyway, the roof in the station is under maintenance. I can count seven pieces of suspicious debris on the tracks. There's pigeons, too. The metal seats are covered in bird shit. I saw someone sit in it and yell the house down when he realised what he had done. It would have been funny if I didn't feel that great fucking void in my chest.   
The ticket wasn't that expensive I don't think, but my money's almost gone now. I stored most of it loosely in the front pocket of my bag for easy-access reasons but now I don't think that's a good idea, judging by all the warnings on the walls and the shady people around me now. It smells kind of bad in here. Or maybe it's just me. I probably need a shower. 

 

(11PM)

When my train came, and everybody around us started to stand up, I remember Snufkin took my arm suddenly and it made me jump. When I looked over at him he was crying. When Snufkin cries his face goes even redder than mine and his arms shake. I've only ever seen him like that twice in my life.   
And then I was crying too, again. Everything went blurry. The lights in the station all turned to great white out-of-focus halos around us. My throat started to hurt pretty badly, for god-knows how many times that day. I took his cold hands in mine and we stood up slowly. 

He said, "Moomintroll. Sorry, I'm being a baby-" he quickly wiped his eyes on his sleeve and grabbed my hand again. "I won't say goodbye because I'm not leaving you."

"Well, you are, kind of," I mumbled. He smiled a bit through the tears and pulled me in for a hug. I squeezed him back. I just remember how thin he was around me. 

"I'm not. I'll come back."

"When?"

"Sometime," he replied, vaguely. "Maybe when the weather is nicer. And the sun will shine through your hair again, and blind me."

I giggled, even if it hurt. "Do you promise?"

The people were all on the train then. Snufkin pulled apart from me and pushed me towards the doors. "I do. Go on, now, or you'll miss it."

"I love you," I said quickly, looking back over my shoulder. I had one foot in the train. Snufkin squeezed my hand and hesitated half a second before kissing me. On the corner of my mouth. I turned around again, my foot still in the train, and I kissed him back. It was bad. We were both crying. 

"See you later," he said, pushing me gently inside. 

"Bye," I said, and then I was standing under the yellow lights of the carriage. The doors closed between us. Snufkin took a few steps back on the platform, and the train started to move. We watched each other float apart, slowly, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama queens


	20. Chapter 20

27th December 1999

Hi Moomin.  
Hope you're okay. Happy Christmas, by the way. I'm sorry I can't afford any kind of gift but I thought a letter would be better than nothing, I suppose.   
Everything is absolutely frozen, have you noticed? Coldest winter in years, they call it. No snow. I'm glad of that. The tent gets cold at night but I recently fished out a thermal blanket from the thrift store so I've been doing alright. I have a job now, if you've been wondering. I can't say where. But it's nice. The lady who owns the store gives me a ride home to the river near the campsite when it's raining. I tell her my house is just over the corner. She's got short grey hair, and a little silk bag of lavender hanging on the rear-view mirror. Her partner comes in, sometimes, and she always gives me Werther's from her pocket when I'm behind the till. 

Anyway, I hope you've gone back to your normal life. And your parents aren't too cross with you after all that's happened. I expected they've sent you back to school. They're sweet people. I never told them that. They probably don't like me much anymore, which I understand. But I'll never forget your mother's cooking! One day I'll come back, and I'll see you again, and I'll ask for the recipe for her stew.   
I will see you again. Maybe not this year, I don't know. I'm doing alright for myself. Better than I was in my old house. I think about Lizard sometimes but I'm sure he's okay. He's tough.   
And you, you're tough too. You're a big, powerful man, and you're going to get through school and life and whatever shit it throws at you. I miss you a lot and maybe you miss me too. I don't know. I think about you all the time. I don't really talk to anybody that much nowadays but I talk to you in my head. Often I replay all the stuff that we used to do together in my head and I remember all the songs we used to sing together. One day I'll come back to you and by then I'll have saved up for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on coloured vinyl. For you, this Christmas present that I never got you. I know people listen to tapes and CDs these days I guess but I'm still gonna do that. Because even if we are so very far away from each other, and we haven't spoken in months, I still love you. Maybe you still love me. Part of me hopes so but I understand if you don't.

I know I'm rambling now. Probably won't send this after all. It's kind of long. 

Well- here is a terrible drawing of the caravan I'm going to save up for. There's space for two in the front if we meet again. I'll make sure it has blue seats because I know blue is your favourite colour. 

Every bit of love,  
Snufkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! :) hope u liked it! This fic was a blast


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